


letting the days go by

by TakeThisWaltz



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Adult Content, Bill Denbrough & Eddie Kaspbrak Are Best Friends, Eddie Goes to Therapy, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Gay Richie Tozier, Gay yearning, Introspection, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Roommates, Slow Burn, Therapy, liberal use of the talking heads, so much pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:14:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 85,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23022316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TakeThisWaltz/pseuds/TakeThisWaltz
Summary: Eddie doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing in his life or his marriage. All he knows is that when he’s with Richie he feels like his best self. So what would his best self do?
Relationships: Bill Denbrough & Eddie Kaspbrak, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 100
Kudos: 227





	1. time isn't holding us

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like music is so important to this fandom, and the Talking Heads are so important to me. So I wanted to process the many feelings I have about Richie and Eddie through processing 'Stop Making Sense,’ and all the other music I imagine they love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from ‘Once in a Lifetime’

Eddie likes to listen to the radio on the drive home from work. Well, maybe not likes. He’s more so used to it at this point that it provides him comfort. Playing the radio let him avoid for so many years the choice of what to listen to, instead having someone else’s selections wash over him. But after Derry he’s slowly been trying to discover what he enjoyed. The worst part, he found out, was that most of his music taste had been lost along with the memories of his formative years because his music had always come from his friends. Hours spent listening to Richie’s mix-tapes and Bev’s cassettes in the club house all gone down the drain. Remembering songs and records had come back more slowly than the rest of his memories. He’d been a week out of Derry when he was finally hit with the recollection of driving down the road in Richie’s car, trees zipping by, belting out ‘Head Over Heels’. He’d never felt so free in his own vehicle.

Since getting back from Derry he’d changed his radio preferences. Previously it had been classical, smooth jazz, maybe an NPR special thrown in. Now it was hits from the ‘80s, early ‘90s rock. Some modern alternative because, loathe as he was to admit it, he wanted to stay current. He’d missed out on too much already. He very subtly solicited music recommendations from the other Losers. Bev sent him Mitski, Bill sent Arcade Fire. Ben sent him New Kids on the Block, which Eddie was worried was the most recent music he had listened to. He didn’t ask Richie, but his search must have found its way back to him somehow, because every once in a while he would send him random songs out of the blue. Eddie never acknowledged them but listened to them covertly, almost ritualistically, when he was walking to his car from the office.

He didn’t know what Myra would say to this new found interest in music. For most of their marriage they’d been united in the opinion that music provided background sound, ambiance, and nothing more. Neither of them sought out deeper meaning or feelings through songs, or through much of any art really.

He found that there were more and more things he was hiding from his wife, both internal and external. She didn’t know about the calls he would make to Bev, perched on the toilet, whispering away from Myra’s attentive ears while she watched the local news at night. She certainly didn’t know that, when he said he was staying late at work, he was actually going out by himself. He’d realized coming back from Derry that he’d spent so much of his life here and knew it so little. So when he finished work at 5:30 or so he would go the one of the bars around his office. Somewhere crowded, maybe even grimy. Being in spaces like that used to make Eddie tense as shit, but he was working through that. He wasn’t going to die from using a pub’s bathroom. He just needed a space that wasn't work and wasn't home, a third place where he could just exist.

Today, however, he was making his way straight home. Myra had offered to cook dinner, a gesture she rarely made. He suspected she could feel him pulling away, becoming more distant, which only made her dig in deeper. He didn’t mean to do it. It was almost like the center of gravity tying him to Myra had failed, and he was drifting slowly out to space. He didn’t know if he felt terrified or exhilarated by that.

 _“You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile,”_ the radio sings out, and he snorts a little. Descriptive, if nothing else.

The song stirs something faintly in him. He was sure he’d heard it before, somewhere in his murky teenage years, but he can’t quite pull it out. He wonders if all the songs he used to love would come back to him with time or if some of them were just lost forever.

_“You may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife. You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?”_

His skin itches. The voice coming out of the car speakers seemed almost to be speaking directly to him. Although he wouldn’t describe his house in Queens as beautiful (and, as embarrassed as he was to acknowledge it, he wouldn’t refer to Myra that way either), he still had no idea how he’d come to have these things, not really. Rather than making a choice he’d just kept moving in the direction he thought was forward, and it had led him exactly here. A place where he wasn’t sure he wanted to be.

He remembers the band’s name. The Talking Heads. Both Richie and Stan had been really into them. He remembers, suddenly, lying in the clubhouse hammock as Richie danced to ‘Road to Nowhere’. He kept trying to pull Stan in but he just stayed perched on the edge of his crate. Eddie had felt something-relieved? (jealous, his adult mind supplies)-as he watched Richie’s attention veer off of him. But at the same time he’d felt a warmth just watching Richie look so happy and so free.

“C’mon Stanny,” he said, tugging on the other boy’s hand. Stan stayed resolute, not even letting the corners of his mouth twitch up. “You know you wanna let loose, get that stick out of your ass.”

“You look ridiculous,” Stan replied.

Richie dropped to his knees in front of him. _“‘Here we go, here we go,’”_ he crooned. _‘We’re on a ride to nowhere, come on inside.’”_ Richie waggled his eyebrows. Stan began to smile, just the faintest bit. Encouraged by that, Richie bolted to his feet, still holding both Stan’s hands and taking him with him. Stan, surprisingly, let him.

“Richie, knock it off,” he said without much conviction.

 _“‘I’m feeling okay this morning,’”_ Richie belted, beginning to dance, hands still intertwined with Stan’s. Stan didn’t dance along but he didn’t resist him either.

 _“‘Here we go, here we go,’”_ Richie sang, spinning Stan. Stan twirled around, gaining momentum. As the lyrics swelled, he started smiling for real now, and even though he dropped Richie’s hands, he was dancing for real now too.

 _“‘We’re on a road to nowhere,’”_ they shouted in unison. They danced together, hands waving above their heads, almost skipping around. _“‘Take you there, take you there.’”_

Eddie couldn’t remember many other times Stan had let loose like that, let himself be free. Richie could do that to people. Unlock the parts of themselves they kept hidden away. Let them dance without a care of judgement.

When pressed later, Stan couldn’t quite explain why he liked the Talking Heads so much. Eddie had posed it in such an earnest way that Stan took a moment, head tilted to one side as he actually considered the question.

“They make me feel nostalgic, but like in reverse. Like I’m nostalgic for something I haven’t experienced yet.”

Eddie didn’t know what to say to that. Sometimes Stan shocked him with his depth, even though he’d possessed it since they were kids.

“And plus,” Stan continued, wrinkling his nose, “the rest of Richie’s taste is garbage.”

He misses Stan.

_“And you may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful house. And you may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful wife!”_

The feeling of hotness across his skin is stronger. It had never been his beautiful house, not really. Myra had picked out the neighborhood and the building and all the furnishings. And was Myra ever really his beautiful wife? He had no idea what a marriage was supposed to look like, but he’d been thinking more and more it sure as hell didn’t look like this.

_“Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down. Letting the days go by, water flowing underground.”_

He knew the days of his life were slipping past. He’d been in a fog, a dream, before Derry, but now he was awake. So why was he moving through his life like he was still trapped in that dream? Time had let him go, twenty seven years of memory loss finally easing up on him. Why couldn’t he move on along with it? Stan had told him to be brave, and as angry as that letter had made him, he couldn’t help but see the truth in what he’d said. Eddie had survived so much, and now he couldn’t be brave when it mattered.

He knew his life in New York wasn’t everything it could be. He’d known that to some extent even before he’d left for Derry, but at that point it had just been a vague niggling at the back of his neck that this wasn’t right, that something wasn’t right. He couldn’t ignore that feeling anymore. With the Losers, he experienced again what it was to love and be loved. He’d been forced to reckon with the fact his house had never been as full of love as any room he was in with the Losers. Even having them clustered around his hospital bed as he recovered made him happier than Myra’s presence ever had.

Watching Bev divorce her piece of shit husband had filled him with a mixture of pride and shame. Pride, because she was stepping into the life she deserved, a life of happiness and support. Shame because he couldn’t do the same thing. He couldn’t justify leaving Myra because she never hurt him the way Tom hurt Bev, and therefore he didn’t have a right to hurt her. He wasn’t capable of sacrificing her own happiness so he could what, run off and have a midlife crisis?

_“You may ask yourself, ‘Am I right? Am I wrong?’ And you may say to yourself ‘Back up! What have I done?"_

The singer practically yells the last word and it shakes something loose in Eddie. What had he done? Seriously, what the fuck had he done?

He’d married Myra and bought a house and gone to work every morning. And he’d never considered if it was the right choice because it seemed like the only choice.

He remembers sitting in the car outside the airport with Richie right after he was released from the hospital. Eddie was going back to New York, back to Myra, who despite increasingly frantic phone calls felt incapable of coming to Maine herself. She thought it would be too much strain on her nerves. He thought of Richie, who’d slept in the uncomfortable hospital chairs until Eddie had told him he smelled too bad to be allowed in anymore.

“You’re really going to do this?” Richie had asked him as he idled the convertible outside.

“What else would I do?” said Eddie, a little surprised.

Something flickered across Richie’s face that was gone almost too fast for him to clock. “I don’t know, doesn’t it seem a little anticlimactic? We kill an ancient evil space clown, you barely avoid getting kabobed by the evil space clown-”

“But I didn’t,” Eddie interjected. “Get kabobed, I mean.” Right after he’d thrown the fence post, when he’d been crouching triumphantly over Richie, he could have died. But Richie had pushed him out of the way, giving them enough distance that Pennywise’s claw just barely lanced Eddie’s side. It had still hurt like a bitch though.

“I didn’t die, and now my life has to continue. We don’t all get to be famous comedians who make our own schedules, coming and going as we please,” he joked weakly. Richie didn’t smile.

“Are you happy? Are you happy with your life?” he asked suddenly. This was more serious than he’d seen Richie maybe the whole time they were in Derry, and he felt like he had to answer Richie’s words honestly.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t even know if I know what that means.”

Richie exhaled softly, hands still on the steering wheel. He was quiet for a breath.

“Come to LA with me,” he said suddenly. Eddie laughed, thinking it was a joke, but Richie didn’t join him.

“You can’t be serious. What, I’m going to abandon my whole life just because it's not completely perfect and euphoric all the time, and run off to LA? I have a job and a wife and a car and-”

“You don’t have to do the same thing just because you’ve been doing it forever. You can do whatever you want.”

Something tight stretched across Eddie’s chest. He couldn’t bear thinking about the larger implications of what Richie was asking. Because it sounded almost like Richie was asking him to run away with him. It almost sounded like Richie was asking him to leave his wife. Was Richie asking him to leave his wife? More importantly, was he asking Eddie to leave his wife for him? The idea made him dizzy. Whatever he wanted. But what if he was just offering his place to be polite, to be nice, to help out an old friend. Because he pitied Eddie and the sad life he’d made for himself in New York. Richie wasn’t asking him to move in with him for any ulterior motives. Life had never been that easy, so why should it start now?

“Richie, I really appreciate the offer man, but I can’t just-”

Richie cut him off. “Yeah yeah we get it, New York couldn’t survive without you, who else would scream at cab drivers and chew out waiters for bringing over regular coke instead of diet?” And just like that, Richie’s walls were back up.

“I’m hardly the only one who screams at cab drivers,” Eddie responded.

Richie smiled. “But you do it better than anyone else. Who else has that much rage packed into such a tiny little body?”

“I’m not tiny, asshole,” Eddie muttered.

“I bet you tell yourself that right up to the moment they offer you the booster seat at the restaurant.”

Eddie had punched his shoulder, and Richie had laughed, and things were mostly back to normal. As Eddie got out of the car, Richie called out once more. 

“Eds?”

Eddie turned around.

“Just know you always have a place to go,” Richie told him. He couldn’t meet his eye, and Eddie couldn’t be certain but it seemed he was blushing a little. He didn’t have it in him to tell him not to call him Eds.

“Thanks Rich,” he’d said and meant it.

Now sitting in the driver’s seat of a different car, he wonders what would have happened if he’d gone to LA with Richie. If he’d run away with Richie.

His heart constricts a little bit. He knows how he feels about Richie. Maybe he hadn’t known when they were kids, but the second Richie banged that gong and their eyes locked a lifetime of confusion made sense. ‘I’m gay,’ he’d thought to himself. ‘I’m gay and growing up I was in love with Richie. I’m gay and I think I’m still in love with Richie.’ But there was nothing to be done about it. Richie was straight and if Eddie ever fucked up their newly regained friendship he’d never forgive himself. Having Richie in his life made it so much better as was. He could live with their almost daily texts, the photos they sent back and forth of funny dogs on the street. It was enough.

But what if he’d gone to LA? What if instead of texting each other photos they showed each them to each other over breakfast, eating bowls of cereal side by side? What if Eddie made Richie his coffee in the morning just how he liked it? Maybe it wasn’t two sugars and just a little cream like it was before but he could learn it again. He could learn everything about Richie again.

He’s sitting in the car outside his house at this point, just letting the music wash over him. He can’t go inside until he remembers how it ends.

 _“Time isn’t holding us, time isn’t after us, time isn’t holding us, time isn’t after us,”_ the singer chants.

Fuck.

Time isn’t holding him anymore. A shitty fucking clown isn’t keeping his life hidden from him. Time doesn’t have to bind him to a mediocrely lived existence; it could set him free. He’d lived, and this is how he’s spending his time?

Eddie breathes in deep. He’s never thought of himself as a particularly brave person, but when Richie told him he was he almost believed it. He knows Richie would say the same thing if he was sitting here now.

‘What are you fucking waiting for, Spaghetti,’ he’d say. ‘Don’t you know we’ve got a whole wide world to make our bitch?’

_“Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was.”_

He gets to choose that life. His whole existence what he’d done had been prescribed to him by his mother, by Myra, by his own fear. But he doesn’t have to do that. He can pick what his life looks like, if he wants to.

Same as it ever was. He remembers the Losers, standing brave with bloody hands. Same as it ever was. He remembers Ben and Bev, holding each other in the quarry water, staring at each other like they’d found the sun. Same as it ever was. He remembers Richie. Richie. Richie.

_“Letting the days go by, letting the days go by, once in a lifetime.”_

If he didn’t do something now he never would.

The song comes to a triumphant conclusion, ringing out in one beautiful final note. Eddie turns off the radio and sits in silence for a moment. He looks at his beautiful house. He knows Myra is probably setting the table for dinner, some healthy, gluten free meal getting colder by the second in the kitchen. He knows they’ll talk about nothing, him briefly going over his day until he’d run out of tidbits from around the office. Then he’d listen to her go on and on and she wouldn’t notice when he didn’t respond. And he would do this weekly until he died.

His resolve steeled, he gets out of the car. Time would no longer be holding him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be way less listening of Eddie just listening to one song, I promise!
> 
> Find me on twitter at [@beepbeepbxtch](https://mobile.twitter.com/beepbeepbxtch) and tumblr at [tozier tool](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/toziertool/blog/toziertool)


	2. strange but not a stranger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie makes a move

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from ‘Burning Down the House’

He almost breaks when he walks into the house. The familiarity of it, the pictures above the mantelpiece of him and Myra at their wedding, they all seem too much. Too much of his life already invested in this. He starts to panic, thinking through the logistics of it all. The lengthy divorce process that he was sure Myra would drag out, the enormousness of moving everything he owns and finding a new place to live. It was too much too fast.

‘Sunk cost fallacy,’ says a voice in the back of his head that sounds like Richie but distant, detached. ‘You think you need to stay when you’ve already put in x amount of time in but it’s actually better to cut your losses because you’ll just continue to lose more if you stay.’

He moves into the kitchen as if on autopilot. He can do this.

Myra is standing by the stove. Her fear of underdone meat often led her to unnecessarily brown anything she cooked and there was a faint burning smell already in the air. 

“Myra,” he says, standing in the doorway. “We need to talk.”

She glances over her shoulder at him, barely taking him in. “Eddie-bear, dinner will be done very soon, you know I don’t like it when you get impatient-”

She calls him the same name his mother did. He’d always wondered why he viscerally hated it so much more than the other pet names she assigned to him.

“It’s not about dinner. In fact, could you please turn that off, you’re going to set off the smoke alarm.”

“Eddie, I don’t like it when you tell me what to do when I’m trying to take care of you. All I’m doing is making a nice meal for you and you treat me like-”

“Myra.” Eddie’s tired of interrupting her but he doesn’t see he had very many other options. “I need you to turn off the stove and sit down.”

Something in his tone must convince her because she silently turns off the burner and sits down at the kitchen table, hands primly folded in front of her. He sits across from her.

“Are you happy?” Eddie asks. “Are you happy being married to me?”

“Of course I am, we’re so happy together, you know that. Where is this coming from? Eddie, you’re scaring me.”

“I’m not happy,” Eddie says slowly. “And I don’t think you are either.”

“Our life is wonderful,” Myra says with a little fear in her voice. “How could things be better? We have a beautiful home and you're successful at your job, and even if you had to run off and get that ugly scar on your face we’re safe now, safe from all of that.”

“I don’t want to be safe. I’ve been safe my whole life and all it’s done has kept me back. I know you don’t understand this, because you weren’t there, but I almost died. And now I know I want to live and I’m going to.”

Myra looks at him with wide eyes. “What are you saying to me, Eddie?”

“I’m leaving, Myra,” Eddie says quietly. “I’m going somewhere else.” 

“You can’t-you can’t do this to me! I need you Eddie, and you need me! Who else is going to take care of you like I do?”

“I am,” says Eddie. “I’m going to start taking charge of my own care.” 

Myra looks panicked. He’s never spoken to her like this before, opposing her without shouting. Their previous fights had a rhythm, a routine of increasingly heated back and forth, that culminated in him apologizing. He was breaking the pattern. “We can work this out,” she says desperately. “I can learn to be what you need now, you’ll see Eddie, I’ve always been what’s best for you.” She reaches out across the table, grasping his hands in her sweaty ones. “You don’t understand how harsh the world can be to someone as delicate as you. No one else will protect you like I do.”

He thinks of his friends, screaming in the face of the most monstrous thing he could imagine. He remembers the frantic look in Richie’s eyes as he’d pressed his jacket into Eddie’s side while he bled sluggishly.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got you,” Richie had babbled. He continued in a Voice that was somewhere between Foghorn Leghorn and Bones from _Star Trek_ ; “You don’t worry about a damn thing Eddie Spaghetti because Doctor Tozier’s gonna fix you right up-”

“Richie,” he’d said, and Richie had stopped short.

“Yeah, buddy?” he said, some kind of wild look in his eyes.

“Go kill that fucking clown,” Eddie said. Richie blinked back, eyes big and a bit shiny behind his glasses. “Anything for you, Eds,” he responded a little raggedly, and then he was gone. 

Eddie can’t help it. He snorts at what Myra said. She looks shocked. 

“Maybe that was true once, but that’s not anymore. I have a family.”

“Yes, I know. I’m your family,” she says, sniffling back tears.

He pats her hand. “No, Myra,” he says as gently as he can. “You’re not.”

He gets up from the table, leaving her sitting there. He makes it to the bottom of the stairs before he hears “Eddie! Eddie you can’t walk away from me! Eddie come back here!” He doesn’t stop.

Once in his bedroom, he pulls a suitcase from underneath the bed. He’s reminded of his frantic rush to pack for Derry. He’d taken so much part of him wonders if he was setting himself up to never come back. At least he’s done this once before, and this time he’s not consumed by nameless fear and questions like ‘Where the fuck is Derry?’. Surveying the room now, he’s surprised by how little he wants to take with him. Only functional things, clothes and toiletries and medicine. Almost nothing personal. It would almost be like he wasn’t even here.

Myra makes it to the doorway, panting. “Eddie please wait,” she begs. “We can work this out. We can go to counseling, we can fix whatever you think is wrong-”

“There’s nothing to fix,” Eddie says, zipping up his suitcase. “I’m done being the person I was before, when I lived here with you, because I finally know there’s a better me I’m capable of being. And I can’t be that me here.”

“I need you,” she tells him desperately. Eddie knows they’re at the end of the Myra manipulation cycle. This was what she pulled out as the last straw, because she knew the guilt would overwhelm him. “I’ll be so hurt if you leave, I’ll be so betrayed, I won’t ever forgive you.”

“Fine,” he says, and makes his way down the stairs.

“Eddie please!”

He makes it to the front door before she clutches onto his arm. “Eddie please don’t leave me, you can’t be so cruel to me, if you ever loved me you won’t be so cruel to me-”

“I didn’t. Ever love you, I mean. Not at least in the way I should have. I’m sorry, I don’t want to cause you pain, but that’s the truth.”

She reels away from him, mouth agape. He opens the door and takes his first step outside.

“Oh, also?” he says, turning around. She looks back at him.

“I’m gay,” he says, and closes the door behind him. 

\----

Eddie sits in the airport and tries to ward off a panic attack. 

He’d felt clear and sure when he’d stepped out of his old house and had walked to a main thoroughfare to hail down a cab. He felt good on the way to the airport; he researched flights, found one in three hours, and pulled the trigger. He felt good calling his office and telling him he was taking an indefinite leave of absence.

What did not make him feel good, however, was the constant stream of text messages coming from Myra. She would intersperse her texts with calls, all of which Eddie sent straight to voicemail. Initially the texts followed the same pattern (“What do you mean you’re gay? You must be making a mistake. You’ve never been gay before. People don’t just turn gay.”) but after Eddie wouldn’t respond to her she tried different tactics. From begging (“Please Eddie, we need each other, who else will understand you?”) to threatening (“If you leave and something terrible happens to me it will be all your fault.”) to purely logistical (“You left your heartburn medication and I know you get chest pains without it, please just come back and get it.”). Eventually came “Is there someone else?? Are you leaving me for someone else??? Answer me Eddie!!!!”

Was there someone else? Technically, he supposed so. He was in love with someone else. But it’s not like he was leaving Myra for Richie. He was just . . . leaving. He was leaving Myra for himself.

He’d stood up to his mother after he’d found out his meds were placebos. He left that stifling house and he went to go help his friends. Maybe he got some help from the power of the fucking turtle but he’d still done it. Then he forgot what it was like to be brave for 27 years and couldn’t stand up to anyone for shit. But since then he'd launched a fence post in the face of the clown monster from hell and crushed its heart with his bare hands. He’d found his friends again, who knew how to support him without stifling him. He had Richie, and, even if he’d never love Eddie in the same way Eddie loves him, he still understood him in a way that was so ingrained, so genuine, so instinctively caring, that for the first time Eddie remembered what it felt like to be home. All he needed to do now was to convince himself he deserved these things, and this was the most he’d ever felt that like he could do that in his life. So he must be doing something right. He didn’t need the fucking turtle anymore. He’d left Myra all on his damn own.

He’d picked up his phone and blocked her. He could always undo it if they needed to talk logistics. 

The feelings of serenity and certainty left him when he made it through security. He still has an hour and a half before boarding, plenty of time to think through and regret every choice he’d ever made. Eddie did best when he had momentum carrying him forward. Now he was filled with the urge to unblock Myra, call her, go back. This had been a huge horrible mistake.

His phone buzzes. He jumps at first then remembered it couldn’t possibly be Myra. He swipes up to see what it was. It’s a picture from Richie. A counter strewn with papers, many of them marked up with red x’s and slash marks. After Derry, Richie decided to start writing his own material again. His manager had been wary but ultimately supportive. He said that Richie’s public breakdown could actually be played off as a catalyst for total reinvention. He was in the midst of planning a comeback tour, which Richie kept referring to as “There’s a New Clown in Town,” which nobody found very funny. In this particular picture, Richie is standing out of frame but still has one middle finger extended to the general mess. It’s followed by a text:

_if im the funniest person in the world then why do all my jokes suck?_

Eddie smiles, his fingers moving across his screen. He sent back:

**Have you tried getting someone else to read them aloud? Because nothing that’s come out of your mouth has ever been funny.**

_i once made steve martin snort into his drink u dont know what the fuck youre talking about_

**Sorry, who is that?**

Richie just sends back an angry emoji.

Eddie contemplates his phone. He realizes, a little belatedly, that he doesn’t exactly know where he’s going. He has a general idea but it’s not like he could hop into a cab at LAX and tell them ‘Take me to Richie Tozier’s house please.’ And he obviously can’t call Richie and tell him he’s coming because then Richie would know he was coming. His reluctance to tell Richie he was literally about to flee across the country to him stemmed from the fact he has no fucking clue how the other man is going to react. He’d offered to let him stay but Eddie still feared that the offer wasn’t serious, or that he’d changed his mind. In the several months they’d been separated maybe Richie’s life had changed so that he didn’t want an extra house-guest. Or at least, he might not want Eddie as a house-guest. Eddie can’t help but imagine calling him, telling him he was coming, only to have Richie inform him awkwardly that he never thought Eddie would take him up on it and that his life was already at capacity. Then Eddie would have to slink on home to Myra and he would never get the courage to leave and he would spend the rest of his life in a purgatory of fear. 

Eddie groans and drops his head in his hands. Like most of his anxieties this wasn’t particularly productive but it did bring up some real logistical issues. His plan was a little half baked. He’d just left his house and felt an overwhelming urge to not be here, in this city, to not spend another second in a place where he’d never really been happy. So he thought about the last time he’d been happy. It was a testament to how fucked his life was that the last time he could remember had been recovering in a hospital bed, in fucking Derry. He obviously wasn’t going back to Derry, so there was only one logical way to chase that feeling.

Pulling out his phone again, he calls Bill. Bill also lives in LA, although Eddie isn’t sure if he’s currently there. Bill picks up on the third ring.

“Eddie,” he says easily. “What’s going on?”

“Hey Bill,” Eddie responds. “Nothing much, you know.” Eddie really didn’t feel like going into the whole ‘I just left my wife bit’. Even if Bill might understand better than anyone; Eddie got the sense from his messages that things weren’t going great with his own wife. 

“I’m calling because-” Eddie winces. There was no way he could make this a casual, off the cuff question. “Do you know Richie’s address?”

There was a pause. “Yes,” Bill says slowly. “But why do you need to know Richie’s address?”

“What, do I need a reason to ask for Richie’s address?”

“Kind of, yes.”

“I’m sending him a postcard,” Eddie says without thinking. “You know, New York in the winter is so beautiful I felt like he should experience it.”

“He can google New York in the winter if he wants. Why do you need Richie’s address?” 

“Ah, well,” Eddie stalls.

Bill sighs. “Did he piss you off? Are you mailing him a swarm of bees or something?”

“What? No, of course not. You can do that?” Eddie wonders briefly if Myra would do that to him if she found out he left her for another man. Not that he had, of course, but she was sure to see it that way.

“I just have no idea why you’d need to know Richie’s address and I like to know things. I can give it to you but it’s going to bug me the rest of tonight if you don’t tell me.”

“It’s in case . . .” fuck, he’d never bee a very good liar. “It’s in case, you know, I’m in the neighborhood and want to stop by.”

“Why don’t you just ask Richie?”

“So it’s a surprise?” he finishes lamely.

Bill seems confused. “You two are so damn weird. Fine, I’ll give you his address just in case you’re ever in LA and want to stop by unannounced.”

Relief washes over Eddie. “Thanks Bill,” he says gratefully.

Bill texts him the address and Eddie glances at it. He knows nothing about LA so Richie’s place could be anywhere. He thanks Bill again and then, hoping to distract his old friend, asks what’s going on with him. Bill confirms that he and Audra are struggling, which Eddie expresses sympathy over. He knows this would be a great segue to tell Bill about the disintegration of his own marriage, but he can’t bring himself to do it. He knows it’s stupid but he wants Richie to be the first to know. They get off the topic of Bill’s wife, digressing into talking about Mike’s road trip and when Ben was going to pop the question to Bev. It wasn’t like they hadn’t been in contact at all, the Losers had a solid group chat going, but there was so much more to go into over the phone. Eddie feels his anxiety bleed away as he and Bill joke and laugh, Bill’s familiar voice reminding him that he’s strong enough to do this. When they were kids Bill could make you believe in anything. If he thought you could do something, then you found the power within yourself to do it. Even as they’ve gotten older and more confident in their own strength, Bill still held a special sway. Eddie's grateful for it, even if the other man didn’t know he's guiding him. 

The wait until his boarding time shrinks until they’re announcing his gate over the loudspeaker. He says goodbye to Bill, mumbling about needing to go to bed and hoping he doesn't sound too suspicious. Then he gathers all of his possessions and makes his way to his flight.  
\-----  
When the cab pulls up outside Richie’s house Eddie’s surprised. He’d known Richie was famous but it hadn’t necessarily occurred to him that also meant rich. But his house seemed to indicate he was fairly wealthy. It was one level but big, nestled into the hills so Eddie’s sure there was an overview of the whole city. At least there’d be space to accommodate him. If Richie’s willing to accommodate him.

Eddie pays the cab driver far too much and gets out, bags in tow. He swallows tightly on the walk to Richie’s door. It’s approximately 2 am and he has no idea if Richie is awake. In the best case scenario for Richie’s mental health he won’t be. But if he doesn’t answer Eddie would be standing outside Richie’s front door, truly screwed over, instead of just minorly screwed over like he was right now. He could sleep in the driveway, he guesses.

He rings the doorbell and waits. Surprisingly, he hears a muffled sound come from within, followed by someone shuffling to the door. And then-

“Whatever the fuck type of-” Richie has the door midway open before he cuts himself off. He doesn’t look bleary enough to have just been woken up but he’s clearly been sleeping recently. Rumpled tee shirt, crazy bedhead, glasses just a little crooked. He looks absolutely shocked, and then strangely antagonistic.

“Am I still fucking dreaming?” he says. “I thought that this shit was done for the night but let’s go for round two. Get it fucking over with.”

Eddie just looks at him. “What the fuck do you dream about dude? Am I in your dreams?”

Richie shifts, still tense but a little more confused. “I dream about normal stuff, okay? You know, dreams; falling, running, fucking. You’re not in all of them,” he says somewhat anxiously. “Or most of them. Just sometimes, you know, you make a guest appearance.” He looks at him for another second. “Jesus, this is fucking weird. Are you really here?”

“Yes, shit for brains. Do you wanna let me in?” Eddie asks. Richie nods, and opens the door wider, moving out of the way. Eddie awkwardly shuffles past him. He notices that neither of them are doing a great job of answering the other’s questions. 

Once inside he doesn’t know where to go. He just stands in Richie’s foyer. Richie shuts the door behind him. Moving past him, he shoves Eddie’s shoulder a little bit, just a tentative push. “The fuck was that for?” Eddie responds, swatting at him.

“Just confirming you’re not a hallucination, since you’re not a dream. There’s a bunch of weird shit floating around here,” Richie says, tapping his head. “You gotta be sure."

“I’m not a weird hallucination, I’m Eddie, and I’d really like to fucking sit down.”

Richie looks at him for a beat longer before grabbing one of his bags and moving deeper into the house. “Make yourself at home, I guess,” he calls out over his shoulder.

Eddie follows him, making his way towards the living room. Richie’s place looks like he’d seen a catalogue image of a generically nice house and told them ‘yes, give me exactly that.’ It was far classier than expected but a little empty. There were slight touches of Richie around the place though. A record player and a decent collection, a Pulp Fiction poster that upon closer inspection was signed by Tarantino. Yeah, Richie had done well for himself. 

Richie plops Eddie’s bag down by the couch and takes a seat, settling down comfortably and kicking his legs up. Once in here, Eddie finds he can’t sit down. He’d been exhausted on the cab ride over, the sleep he’d gotten on the plane not really helping with the time difference as much as he wanted it to. But now that he was here, face to face with Richie, he was wired with adrenaline. He almost feels like pacing.

“Do you wanna tell me why you’re here?” Richie asks. “You’re lucky I don’t sleep through the night or you’d still be outside setting up an impromptu homeless camp.” He yawns, stretching his arms overhead. Eddie tries to not look at the tiny sliver of skin between his t-shirt and his pajama pants. “Not that I’m not overjoyed to see you at 2 fucking o’clock in the morning, but somehow this somehow this doesn’t seem like a casual visit. Maybe it’s all the suitcases or that you live 3,000 miles away. You know, just little things like that.”

“I left my wife,” Eddie blurts out. “I just left, I didn’t plan on it but I did, and when I left I realized I had no idea where to go so I came here.”

Richie’s eyebrows shoot up and his mouth gapes open a little. He just stares at Eddie for a beat before closing it. “Huh,” he says. Then he gets up off the couch and heads out of the room. 

“That’s it? You’re gonna be quiet for fucking once? No wisecrack or snarky comment or annoying voice?” Eddie calls after him. 

“I’m getting whiskey. I’m not gonna make you talk about your failed marriage sober.”

While Richie’s gone Eddie sits down at the edge of the couch, fidgeting nervously. Richie returns with two glasses of amber liquid, one of which he hands to Eddie. Eddie eyes it dubiously. He’s never really been a whiskey drinker, even in high school when they were stealing from their parent’s liquor cabinets and didn’t have very many options. As an adult, he mostly stuck to wine. He secretly loved fruity cocktails, but never felt like he could order them because they were too girly. Too gay, he acknowledges to himself now. He really is a fucking mess of repression. Nevertheless, he takes a gulp of whiskey. It burns the back of his throat but also feels nice.

“So you left your wife. Was it because she was a version of your mom you were having sex with?” Richie asks. 

Eddie’s first thought is ‘we didn’t really have sex’.

“Fuck you,” he says instead.

“Seriously though, Eds, why? Why now?”

Eddie couldn’t exactly admit ‘I heard a Talking Heads song and it reminded me of you and everything I was missing out on in life and I couldn’t stand it for one more goddamn minute.’ “I wasn’t happy,” he replies. “You know I wasn’t happy, I’m not sure if I’ve ever been happy, but certainly never with Myra. I realized-”this is the part he hates facing-“I realized after Derry that yeah, you’re right, I married my fucking mom-shut the fuck up, I’ll never say you’re right ever again-and I couldn’t be smothered like that anymore. It just took me a while to process how fucked it all was. So when I got home from work today I just packed up my shit and left.”

“And then you came here,” Richie adds.

Eddie begins to feel a little uncomfortable. Now they’d be forced to acknowledge the totally normal thing he’d done of flying across the country without prior warning to crash with his best friend. “Yeah well, you said I could stay here, and I didn’t know where else to go, and I didn’t wanna get a hotel, do you know how much bacteria lives in those sheets, and I had no reason to stay in New York because I quit my job because I hated that too. I don’t even know if I even like New York, I’m so fucking tightly-wound already and everyone there is rushing around constantly and it’s so goddamn dirty, so I figured, what the hell, why not just make a total fucking change. And I’m sorry if that was a bad idea and you don’t want me here, I can go somewhere else, I just thought-”

“Eddie,” Richie says. Eddie feels his heart plummet down. This is the part where Richie tells him he’s being crazy and he should just pack up and go back to New York. Richie doesn’t want him here. He doesn’t want to take care of the mess of a person that it seems like Eddie’s becoming. But suddenly there’s a dazzling smile spreading across Richie’s face. “Eddie, this is fucking fantastic. You left your shitty ass marriage and your boring ass job and now you’re actually fucking here.”

Eddie feels so warm he could burst. Richie wants him here. Richie’s excited that he’s here. But he just needs to be sure.

“So it’s okay if I . . . stay?” he says

“It’s more than fucking okay, it’s great. We’re gonna have so much fun, you don’t even know. You’re gonna love LA, it has all these healthy food stores and the sun is gonna be so good for you. God, you used to get so tan in the summer,” he says wistfully. “All golden and freckly.” 

Eddie looks down, flustered, as the warmth inside his chest continues to blossom. Richie wants him here (And Richie remembers how he used to look in the summer). This wasn’t a huge horrible mistake.

Richie bounds up from the couch. “But we can figure out the sightseeing tour of LA later. I’m exhausted and you’re what, two hours ahead? So you must be exhausted too.”

“Three hours,” Eddie mutters. He’s crashing from the adrenaline rush of not knowing how Richie would react, and now he really does feel tired. Since he knows he has a bed to sleep in all he wants to do is collapse into it. 

“I’ll show you the full house tomorrow,” Richie says, shouldering Eddie’s bags once more. “Right now let’s get you to a crash pad.”

Eddie dutifully follows him. He’s too tired to take in many details about the house. It certainly seems spacious. Richie leads him to a boring but neat guest room. Once there, he stands a little awkwardly.

“Can I . . . get you anything?” he asks. “More pillows, water, a stuffed animal to gently cuddle with?”

“Fuck off,” Eddie says automatically. “No, this is good,” he follows up with more sincerity. “Just leave me alone to sleep in peace.”

Richie begins to make his way to the door. On his way out, he grabs Eddie’s wrist. “Hey,” he says, all soft. “I’m glad you came here.”

Eddie nods, not fully trusting himself to speak. “Me too,” he mutters, hoping Richie doesn’t hear his voice drop down. 

Richie turns to leave. He stops at the door. Turning back he calls out, “Since the new Mrs. Kaspbrak is back on the market, think I can complete the set? Make all the Mrs. K’s fall in love with me and my enormous-”

“Beep beep asshole,” Eddie says. “Don’t be disgusting.”

“You can’t make me go against my nature, Eds,” Richie says, going out into the hallway.

“Don’t call me that!” Eddie yells at the closed door. Richie gives no response.

Eddie rubs at the spot where Richie touched his wrist. It almost feels like it tingles. He sighs. He is so fucking screwed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to try and update this once a week! I have the whole thing mapped out and about half of it written but it keeps taking me in exciting directions. I love any and all comments/kudos!
> 
> Find me on twitter at [@beepbeepbxtch](https://twitter.com/beepbeepbxtch) and tumblr at [toziertool](https://toziertool.tumblr.com/)


	3. i'm tense and nervous and i can't relax

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie does his best

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from 'Psycho Killer'

When Eddie wakes up in the morning he initially forgets where he is. The bed is far comfier than the one he’s used to, a big fluffy comforter swaddling him instead of the blanket he uses at home. There’s sun streaming through the windows, throwing him off further. He almost never gets up when it’s full light outside. What fucking time is it? Shouldn't he be at work?

Groaning a little bit, it all comes back to him. It has been approximately 20 hours since he left his wife and flew across the country. He’s in Richie Tozier’s guest room. This is fine. Everything is fine.

He rolls over to check his phone, which thank god he’d remembered to charge before he passed out. Checking the time, he’s surprised to find out he slept until 1 pm. Or 4 pm to his jet-lagged body. He never sleeps this late, but he also can’t remember the last time he felt this well rested. He didn’t have a single nightmare. It’s not like they were a nightly occurrence, but sometimes he found himself being chased by enormous pinchers, or he’d be confronted with red balloons that would burst and spew pus all over him. He and Myra had started sleeping in separate beds when he came back from Derry so she’d stop asking Eddie so many questions about his dreams (well, that and other reasons). He couldn’t explain them to her and he knew she’d offer no comfort even if he could. 

He gets up slowly, brushing his teeth and taking a shower. Once out of the shower he decides to put his pajamas back on. It’s not like he has anywhere to be or anything to do so fuck it.

He follows the smell of coffee to the kitchen. Once there, he finds Richie sitting at the counter, laptop in front of him, concentrating hard. He doesn’t even seem to notice when Eddie comes in. Eddie clears his throat. Richie looks up, and a smile breaks out over his face.

“The sleeping princess has arisen from her slumber,” he says in a high pitched fairy tale Voice. “If you’d stayed in there another hour I would have assumed you’d slipped into a coma, and then I’d have to stab you with an adrenaline needle.”

“No one should let you have access to one of those, and that’s not how you get someone out of a coma,” Eddie says back. “Part of the problem with a coma is that you can’t just wake the person up.”

“Not medically induced comas,” Richie responds. “Those are doctors playing God. Imagine if I was a doctor, I could just put anyone I wanted in a coma.” 

“You’d puke on a patient your first day at a hospital,” Eddie says, moving into the kitchen. “Can you share the fucking coffee?” he says.

“Oh somebody’s still a big grumbly baby in the morning. Wait, it’s not even the morning anymore, you have no excuse to be a dick,” Richie says, pushing a cup of coffee across the counter at him.

“The first half hour after you wake up is honorary morning.” Eddie gratefully takes a sip, then makes a face. “Your coffee tastes like shit,” he says. “What is this, instant?” 

“It’s not instant!” Richie looks offended. “It’s Folgers.”

“Jesus Christ,” mutters Eddie, pushing the mug away from himself.

“That’s why you add cream and sugar!” Richie says. “Coffee’s not supposed to taste good, it’s supposed to make you feel like you took just enough Adderall to get by.”

“Have you never had good coffee? There must be good coffee somewhere in LA.”

“Nope,” says Richie. “Only tumeric lattes and green juice.” 

“Fuck,” Eddie groans. “I really didn’t want to miss anything about New York, but that fucking sucks.”

“Not my fault you take your coffee black,” Richie says. “You’re the one who’s fucked up.”

“You know, it’s possible to make decent coffee in your own home. It’s not that hard to operate a French press.”

“French press?” Richie waggles his eyebrows. “Sounds like a sex thing.”

“You can’t just assume all French things are dirty.”

“I don’t know Eds, the French are a very horny people. Zoot allors,” he says, slipping into a horrible Voice somewhere between French and German, “I think about brie and fucking all the time, oui oui.”

“Well a French press isn’t a fucking sex thing, it’s a type of coffee maker, and you obviously need to start buying whole beans instead of pre-ground, so you have to get a grinder too-” Eddie cuts himself off. He can’t believe he just showed up and is already prescribing what Richie should have in his kitchen. Maybe he and Richie had always had a relationship where they bickered but his friend was doing him a massive favor by letting him crash at all. Probably not the best idea to be a dick about it.

Richie doesn’t seem to mind though. “Never really had a taste for the finer things,” he says. “Quick, dirty, and cheap is how I like to do it.”

“Yeah, those are three perfect adjectives for you,” Eddie responds. He takes a sip of his coffee, grimacing. He thinks about asking Richie if he has any food. But he really doesn’t want to be any more of an imposition.

Somehow sensing Eddie’s hunger, Richie gets up and goes to the fridge. Peering in, he calls out, “I think the milk is still good if you want cereal.”

That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement. But, he’s hungry. “That sounds fucking dubious. Give me a percentage grade of sureness.”

“I am wholly certain of this whole milk,” Richie says. He sniffs it, and exaggeratedly pretends to be overcome by the stench of it. Laughing at Eddie’s horrified expression, he says, “Chill your tits, it doesn’t actually smell and it hasn’t passed its expiration date. I promise it won’t kill you.”

“You’re the fucking worst, you know that? Fine, I’ll take it,” Eddie responds. Richie pulls down a bowl and pours the milk in first, then goes and gets a box of cheerios and adds them in on top. Eddie mentally catalogues how weird that is but saves that argument for a later day. 

Pushing the bowl across the counter to him, Richie says. “We can go out and pick up the shit that you like later. Macrobitoic, probioitc, whatever. There’s a ton of kombucha places around here. Do you drink kombucha? Is that a healthy person thing or a dirty hippie thing?”

“Dirty hippy thing, I think,” Eddie tells him. Maybe he should start though. He’d read that consuming fermented foods had health benefits.

“Either way LA is lousy with it all. Full of healthy people and some dirty hippies by the beach and kombucha everywhere. Shit’s so organic you’ll get sick of it. I usually wouldn’t allow that sort of trash in my house, but I’ll make an exception for you. For as long as you’re here at least. Uh,” Richie says, trying to sound casual. “How long are you gonna be here?”

Fuck. He’d hoped he could put this off for a little while. Because the truth was he had no fucking plan other than being close to Richie and he couldn’t just fucking say that, because that was the opposite of what straight friends said to each other. 

“Well, I, uh,” he decides to go for honesty. “I don’t really know? I guess stay here until I figure something out, if that’s cool with you. I gotta find a job but not immediately. I can go back to what I was doing before, but I don’t think I have to. But why not, you know; I’m good at it and I make decent money and since I don’t care anymore I won’t put as much pressure on myself to work all the time. I know you’re right, being a risk analyst is boring as shit, but I don’t think I’d mind it so much if I had other things going on in my life. So I guess I just have to cultivate hobbies. I don’t know, start fucking running or something?”

“Do you still have those tiny shorts?” Richie asks. “The little red ones?”

“Even if I did they would be minuscule on me now. No, I own a normal sized pair of shorts now, grow up.”

“‘Grow up,’ that’s cute coming from you. Nothing you own is ‘normal sized’ because you’re not normal sized. You’re at 75% zoom out on a computer screen; just a regular sized person shrunk down.” Before Eddie can say anything in response, Richie barrels ahead. “You can stay here while you figure shit out. Just promise not to put all my belongings on the street after our first fight.”

“We’ve passed the time for a “first fight” several decades ago,” Eddie reminds him. “But . . . thanks,” he says. 

“No problemo,” says Richie.

They sit in silence for a second as Eddie’s brain catches up to his body. As long as he’s awake he might as well start moving forward. “I’m gonna get my computer,” he says. Standing up. “Do you mind if I . . . take care of some stuff?”

“Stuff? Are you going to watch porn?”

“No, asshole,” Eddie snaps. “I have to call a lawyer and file for divorce,” he admits. “I don’t think she’ll accept that it’s over until she’s being served legal papers.”

“What are you gonna put under reasons for separation? Irrevocable resemblance to your mom?”

“It’s been thirty fucking years, couldn’t we stop with the ‘your mom’ jokes? I thought you were working on new material.”

“How could I stop when you’ve provided me with endless ammunition by marrying your mom? Double the options now that we’re both fucking Mrs. K.” 

“I can’t stand you,” Eddie mutters. “You’re so fucking annoying and you never shut the fuck up.”

Richie gets up from the kitchen counter. “Love you too, Eddie Spaghetti,” he says and drops a kiss on the top of Eddie’s head. Eddie hopes he doesn't notice the faint blush that creeps up his cheeks. He squirms away from Richie instead. “Don’t call me that,” he says, the autopilot response distracting him from his reaction to Richie’s touch. 

“If you text me a list I can go out and get groceries and shit,” Richie says. “Now that you’re here I have to look like a reasonable adult who doesn’t live off of bags of shredded cheese and saltines.”

“You must be joking,” says Eddie in response. “Wait, are you joking?”

“I’ll stand above the sink at midnight and just shove handfuls of cheese into my mouth,” Richie says, miming the action. “Just go to town on it like a starving rodent.”

“You’re so gross,” says Eddie. “Go get some real fucking food.”

After Richie leaves, Eddie googles divorce lawyers in New York City. He pores through different results until he finds a woman who looks even keeled but steely. He sends her an email explaining his situation, and then he waits.

She sends him a response back fairly quickly. Eddie remembers that even though he’s still lounging the work day is in full swing for most people. In her email, she says that this case would be cut and dry and, since they’d signed a prenup and didn’t have many contentious assets, probably a little below her skill level, but she wouldn’t say no to his offer of generous compensation. She pointed out it might be harder to get through this process if he was living full time in California, but he assured her he’d be willing to fly back when necessary. He didn’t want to go back to living in New York, where he had no support network and no one to talk to. Already being around Richie made him feel more alive than he had the past several months in New York. 

He unblocks Myra briefly to text her that she should be expecting divorce papers to be served soon. He’s in the process of screening her calls and re-blocking her when Richie gets home. His arms are full of grocery bags, and he leans a little heavily to one side. Eddie wants to rush up and help him but he has the stupid thought that that would give too much away.

“I got everything you asked for, plus a bunch of other shit. I kinda just threw in everything that I hate,” Richie tells him, beginning to put away groceries. “More fucking green stuff than I’ve ever bought before in my life.”

“Did you get rice?” Eddie asks him. Richie looks blank. “Was I supposed to get rice?” he says. 

“How do you feed yourself?” Eddie says.

“Poorly, like I do most things,” Richie responds.

He continues to put away groceries while Eddie checks his email. He sees an email from an unknown account with the subject line ‘Eddie you can’t do this to me’ and deletes it. Hopefully this behavior won’t continue after Myra gets served divorce papers; he can’t block every email account that she creates.

Eddie looks up in the now empty kitchen, Richie having wandered to some other part of the house. He spies something on the counter and goes over to it, picking it up in his hands and examining it.

“Richie,” he calls out, “What the fuck is this?”

Richie pokes his head back in. “It’s a french press, dipshit. Don’t you know what a french press looks like?”

“I know it’s a french press asshole, I’m the one who explained to you what a french press is, I just want to know what one is doing in the kitchen."

Richie shrugs. “You wanted one,” he responds, and disappears into the house again. 

Eddie holds the french press almost tenderly. If he’s going to survive this he can’t read deeper meaning into everything Richie does or he’s going to go insane. But he can’t help thinking over and over about Richie hearing him say he wanted something, and then just fucking doing it for him. 

\----

Eddie and Richie settle into a routine fairly quickly. After calling his office, Eddie is pleased to find out they hadn’t considered his request for a leave of absence as him quitting the company. Apparently he’s indispensable enough that they’re willing to install him in the LA branch. He finds the work more bearable when he’s not using every second at the office as an excuse to not be home. He likes being home now. 

He gets up for work and leaves before Richie even wakes up. After the end of the work day, he comes home; Richie's usually working on his new material. He shares bits and pieces and Eddie gives him his honest opinion. Eddie cooks dinner, he and Richie eat together, and then they watch TV together on the couch. Then Eddie heads off to an early bedtime. Most nights Richie stays up and continues to write; Eddie has no idea when he usually goes to sleep. 

Eddie’s doing a phenomenal job of keeping his feelings for Richie under control. He’s a little meaner to him than he needs to maybe, but it seems the best way to deflect. The domesticity of their arrangement sometimes overwhelms him. The only way he lets himself slip up is when they’re watching TV. Eddie allows himself to sit far closer than necessary to Richie, especially on such a huge couch. Their knees brush sometimes, or Richie will put his arm around the back of the sofa so that Eddie can almost pretend he has his arm around him. Richie doesn't seem to mind, or at least doesn’t move away from Eddie. 

Eddie hears Richie have a nightmare for the first time about a week after he moves in.

He’s roused by someone yelling. His first thought is that someone broke in and Richie is fighting with them. So he rushes out into the hallway, not even thinking to grab a weapon. But the hallway is empty.

“You can’t make me leave him,” he hears from Richie’s room. “I’m not fucking leaving him!” He sounds desperate, and, while Eddie is relieved no one is breaking into the house, he hates hearing Richie in pain. He hurries to Richie’s bedroom door and pushes it open. 

Richie is clearly doing poorly. He’s thrashing a little, the sheets are all bunched up around him, and his curls stick to his forehead with sweat. Eddie doesn’t want to freak him out but he doesn’t want to see him in any more pain.

“Richie,” he says emphatically from the doorway. Richie doesn’t hear him. “Richie, wake up,” he says slightly louder. Richie whimpers. Eddie steps a little further into the room and yells, “Richie, wake up!”

Richie startles awake, sitting bolt upright in his bed. Chest heaving, his eyes scan the room. When they land on Eddie he makes a soft gasp. He takes him in in a way that makes Eddie feel stripped bare “Is this real?” he says, something close to panic in his eyes.

“Of course this is real,” Eddie responds. “I’m real. Promise”

Richie doesn’t say anything for a moment and just looks at him, still breathing heavily. Then his face crumples, fear giving way to relief. “Thank fucking god,” he says, and rubs his eyes with the back of his hand. He seems a little out of it still but no longer as upset.

“Did you have a nightmare?” Eddie asks. He feels awkward just standing there, but he doesn't want to leave Richie alone or to move closer to Richie in bed. He doesn’t know if he can take sitting on Richie’s bed.

Richie nods. 

“Do you want to . . . talk about it?” says Eddie.

Richie starts in bed, seeming to wake up more. “Absolutely fucking not,” he responds. “Look, I’m okay. This just happens sometimes. I’ll be fine in a couple of minutes. Just go back to sleep, don’t worry about me.”

“Are you sure?” Eddie asks. It seems wrong to leave Richie like this but if he doesn’t want to talk to him there’s nothing else he can do.

 _'You could crawl into bed with him'_ , the traitorous voice in his head supplies. _'You could curl around him until he’s sleeping soundly in your arms. You could keep the nightmares at bay'._

Eddie clenches his fists. Richie doesn’t want that.

“Of course I’m sure, I’m fucking fine.”

“Jesus, okay,” says Eddie, not believing him and still hovering. “But are you sure you don’t need anything?”

“Just a shit ton of therapy,” Richie says, waving Eddie away. “Now go get your beauty rest.”

Eddie doesn’t feel great leaving Richie in this state, but he can’t really force the other man to let him stay. “Fine,” he says. “But wake me up if you think of anything, or if you have another bad dream.” 

“Sure,” says Richie. Eddie doubts him but doesn’t want to push at 2 in the morning. So he nods, mutters ‘good night,’ and goes back to his own bed.

Once there, he finds he can’t fall asleep. He’s too busy listening for another yell. He can hear Richie moving around for a little bit until the house quiets down again. Eventually, he drifts off. 

He’s in a terrible mood when he wakes up, and an even worse one on the way to work. Richie has two cars, because of course he does, so Eddie’s started taking the less flashy one to work. Usually he really enjoys his ride into the office. He sips his coffee and listens to the morning playlist he made for himself. But this morning he didn’t have enough time to make coffee, which makes him feel strangely guilty because he knows there won’t be any coffee waiting for Richie when he wakes up, but then he has to remind himself Richie is a grown goddamn man and made himself coffee for many years before Eddie showed up on the scene. 

He’s snappish when he goes into the office. It had been one of his goals to not build up the reputation of being a brusque asshole he had at his last job, but he doesn’t do so well on that today. He even orders an intern to bring him coffee, something he really tries to never do.

On his way home he considers why he’s in such a bad mood (besides the lack of sleep). He keeps coming back to something Richie said last night: “a shit ton of therapy.”

Eddie had never been in therapy. As much as his mother rushed him to the doctor for any physical ailment he might have, she believed the science of mental health was all quackery. Myra hadn’t particularly believed in it either, although she was less adamant than his mother. As an adult, he’d never considered he needed therapy, a sign that he probably desperately needed it. Even before all the clown shit his head was a mess of anxiety and parental trauma. He just couldn’t be bothered to sort it all; he was too busy moving forward and not thinking about it. 

But as he pulls into Richie’s driveway he thinks for the first time seriously about getting some professional help. He’s worked so hard on learning to ask for help from his friends. This entire move out to LA was the most he’s ever leaned on someone before. But maybe it’s time to admit his friends aren’t equipped to tangle his mess of neuroses alone. This was something he needed to tackle with the aid of a licensed professional

Going inside, he finds Richie at the counter on his computer.“Spagheds!” he calls out. “How was the work day, nose to the old grindstone and that?” “Clark from HR is so fucking annoying, it’s like he never learns. He’s got this soft voice and starts every sentence with this drawn out ‘wellll’ it drives me fucking insane.” “Is there like one person you like who you work with? Just one who you don’t think is an incompetent mess? Like someone who you’ll smile at, maybe even eat lunch with? Please don’t tell me you eat your salad at your desk, that’s sad.” “You eat lunch by yourself everyday, don’t talk.” Eddie pauses as he thinks about it. “Melissa the receptionist is okay,” he admits. “She puts different flowers out on the desk everyday and always tells me when she likes my ties.” “Lets count one work friend as a victory." Eddie starts the business of making his after work smoothie. He’d dragged Richie to a farmers market over the weekend and there’s actually fruit in the house now. Eddie had a difficult relationship with fresh food that he was attempting to work on. For so much of his life he avoided it because he didn’t know what bacteria it might be carrying, what pesticides it might have been exposed to. But now that he was trying to be genuinely healthy, to take care of his body instead of feeling trapped in it, he was working on eating farm grown fruits and vegetables. Watching Richie eat a strawberry, juice dribbling from the corners of his mouth, made it seem like an excellent decision. 

“Hey,” Eddie says. Richie looks up, a concentrated frown still on his face. “Do you have the number of a therapist? Or at least someone who could refer me to one?”

“Why the fuck would I know a therapist?” Richie responds. 

Eddie looks at him kind of blankly. “You said-last night, you said you were in a shit ton of therapy-“

“Said I needed a shit ton, not that I was doing anything about it.”

“Don’t you think you should be in therapy?” Eddie tells him. 

“Whatever, don’t you think you should be?” Richie snarks back. 

“Yes, idiot. That’s why I asked you for the number of a therapist. Because we should both be in therapy. Because we’re mentally fucked.”

“Huh.” Richie goes back to typing. “Well, I don’t know anyone. Ask Bill, I’m sure his Hollywood friends get their heads shrunk all the time.”

“I can ask Bill, but I’m gonna ask for both of us. Talking to someone can only help,” Eddie tells him. 

Richie sighs and closes his computer screen. “What the fuck would I say to a therapist? ‘After returning to my hometown, which I’d magically repressed for all of my adult life, I murdered a lunatic with an ax and then came together with my childhood best friends to crush the heart of an evil space clown. Now sometimes I have weird dreams and vague separation anxiety.’ And they’d go ‘neato,’ make some quick notes, and institutionalize me. No thank you.”

“You don’t have to tell the full truth. Lots of people have trauma that keeps them from remembering their childhood, that’s the entire basis of Freud’s theories on repression. I know the clown thing kinda takes precedence but there was so much fucked shit about Derry. No adults cared about us, and we were bullied constantly. That’s scarring as shit.”

“Don’t I fucking know it,” Richie mutters. Eddie decides to not delve deeper into that right now. 

“Just say you remembered your fucked up childhood after your childhood best friend committed suicide. That would give anyone issues and is also 100% true. And then when you were back in your truly awful hometown you saw another friend of yours get stabbed. So now you have nightmares.”

“Look, man, I really appreciate you looking out for me and all, but I’m fine. I’m doing just peachy.”

“Okay, then, what do you dream about?” Eddie asks. Richie looks away from him. “You can’t ask me that,” he says, sounding ragged.

“If you can’t talk about it with me you’re clearly not fucking fine. I have nightmares too, we all have nightmares. We need to process it somehow.”

“I can’t talk about it with anyone, okay?” Richie sounds frustrated. “It’s more than all the shit you mentioned. It’s . . . it’s the Deadlights too.”

“What do you mean, it’s the Deadlights?”

He grits his teeth like Eddie is physically dragging this out of him. “I saw shit. In the Deadlights. When I got stuck in them. And now I dream about it. They’re not normal fucking dreams. They’re so vivid, like I’m just living in this fucked up world. And I can’t even talk about it to Bev, who’s the only other person who might understand, because I can’t fucking say it out loud. I already heard about the terrible shit she saw and she doesn’t need to hear about the terrible shit that I see. And they’ll probably stop eventually, or I’ll get used to them. So I’ll be fine.”

“That is so fucking stupid,” Eddie snaps back. “Bev would be mad as shit that you don’t feel like you can talk to her about this. We’re supposed to be there for each other. We all saw the worst shit we could possibly see together, and the only reason we survived is because we were all there. So you can’t just decide you’re gonna do everything on your own now. Maybe she needs someone to talk to, have you thought about that?”

“No,” mutters Richie, looking down.

“You don’t have to just suffer. Even though you feel like none of us understand you you’re still not alone. And when you willfully neglect your health it makes me want to kick your ass.”

“Maybe I willingly neglect my health so you don’t stop neglecting me,” Richie says, still not meeting his eyes. He says it like a joke but Eddie knows it isn’t one.

Eddie takes a moment to really look at him. He has the same bags under his eyes Eddie had spotted the first night he got in. Eddie wonders if he ever really sleeps, even on the nights he doesn’t have nightmares. Richie had been dumb and reckless since they were kids, always riding his bike a little too fast or talking back to someone who wouldn’t hesitate to bust up his lip. And Eddie had always been there to patch him up while berating him, didn’t he know how stupid it was to take his hands off the handle bars, couldn’t he just keep his mouth shut for once, and Richie would just do it again. And Eddie would never admit it, but he loved being the one to take care of Richie, the one making sure he was okay even as he let him know how stupid and dangerous he was. 

“I couldn’t,” Eddie says, a little more vulnerable than he intends it to be. Richie looks at him, lips slightly parted. “I mean, I wouldn’t. But you keep doing shit that’s bad for you, you always have, and sometimes you do it because it’s funny, because you want people to pay attention to you, which is stupid because we would pay attention to you anyways, but sometimes it seems like you do it because you don’t care if you’re okay or not and that’s scary as shit. Because I can’t patch everything up and I want you to be okay, even if you don’t. So will you just fucking talk to someone?”

“Would you pay attention to me otherwise?” Richie asks. 

“What-” Eddie wasn’t expecting that.

“If I wasn’t constantly endangering my health and crossing a line and riling you up would you still pay attention to me?”

Eddie can’t respond. He can’t tell him, ‘Yes, I pay attention to you when you’re doing nothing, when you’re just sitting in silence or yawning because I want to watch everything you do.’ So instead he just says, “Yes, don’t be stupid,” not looking at him, and hopes he doesn’t give everything away.

Richie is quiet for a second. “I’ll talk to Bev,” he says eventually. “Don’t know if I’ll ever feel like talking to a therapist but I’ll talk to Bev.”

“Thank you,” says Eddie. He’s still feeling shaky, thrown off by Richie’s question. “Do you want a smoothie? There’s some extra.”

Richie just keeps looking at him. “Yeah, thanks.”

When he hands him the glass, Eddie feels a spark travel up his body when their fingers brush together. He hopes Richie doesn’t seem him shiver, or if he does, he hopes he blames it on the air conditioning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Richie uses Voices whenever I remember Richie uses Voices. Also writing Richie and Eddie bickering gives me life
> 
> Find me on twitter [@beepbeepbxtch](https://twitter.com/beepbeepbxtch) at and tumblr at [toziertool](https://toziertool.tumblr.com/)


	4. driving in circles i come to my senses sometimes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie goes to therapy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from 'Girlfriend is Better'

Richie was right; Bill knows the number of an excellent therapist, and Eddie starts going regularly. At first he finds it stiff and uncomfortable. Out of ingrained societal politeness he keeps asking his therapist how things are going on with her until she gently reminds him their goal is to discuss him, not her, and that it would be unprofessional and counterproductive to tell him details about her life. 

Turns out there’s a lot to cover even without the supernatural elements. He explains the best he can about his repressed memories, how the trauma of his childhood had left everything a blank haze up until recently. He doesn’t say what the actual trauma is, or that it’s actually magical in nature, because he doesn’t want her to think he’s crazy, but there’s enough that went on in his youth that he doesn’t have to cite a specific event. He tells her about his mom, about how he realized he’d replicated the patterns of her abuse in his adult life through his marriage. About how she instilled a fear into him of contamination, of dirt and germs and the way other people could be infected with those things and then infect him. About how he’s so scared of getting sick that he’s never really been able to eat at restaurants. About how sometimes he doesn’t want to be touched because he doesn’t know where the other person's hands have been while simultaneously wanting to be held so badly he could scream. 

He comes out to her on their third session. They’re talking about something unrelated, about how he channels his rage into being aggressive at work, when he just can’t hold it in any more.

“And being out of control, it makes you-”

“I’m gay,” he cuts her off. She closes her mouth but doesn’t look immensely startled. “Sorry, I kept waiting for it to come up organically and it just wasn’t, and I feel like it’s kinda the whole reason I need to be in therapy so we should talk about it. Not that you need automatically need therapy if you’re gay, I’m sure there are many well adjusted gay people, I’m just not one of them. I need to talk about it.”

“Okay,” she says. “What do you want to say about being gay?”

He considers it. He hadn’t really gotten beyond the coming out part. “I don’t really know how I feel about being . . . gay. That’s only the second time I’ve ever said that out loud. The first time was to my ex wife when I left her, and I did it partially to convince her that it was real. And myself, to some extent. I just didn’t think she’d give up if she didn’t have some concrete reason.”

“And did it make her give up?” his therapist asks.

“Not really,” Eddie admits. Myra had been just as unpleasant in their divorce proceedings as he expected her to be. Even though Eddie gave up the house without a fight, she kept finding things to nitpick over. Eddie had to fly back to New York in a month to meet with their lawyers in person and he was dreading it. 

“Have you felt you might be gay for a while?” his therapist prods.

“No, I had no idea,” he says. “For most of my life I just didn’t think I was that attracted to people. Everyone talks about sparks and chemistry but I thought that was just made up. I didn’t feel that for women so I just convinced myself it wasn’t real. The times I felt that for other men I would just dismiss it. I always cut myself off from going further because I kept telling myself I was straight and it was stupid to think about that kind of shit. I wouldn’t let myself think about kissing them or touching them or anything, that’s how much of a fucking number my mom did on me. She told me every gay man had AIDs because they did dirty things with each other, and all of them would be dead within five years. So I would just lie in bed at night, thinking ‘I can’t be gay because I don’t wanna die,’ over and over again. Some guy hit on me at a party my freshman year of college and I pushed his hand off my arm and went and rubbed the spot with soap until my skin was red and I never went to another party in college. Sometimes I would imagine standing close to men, looking up at them as they smiled down at me or laughed at something I said, but that was it.”

He doesn’t mention there was a specific type of man he’d pictured. He’d always noticed tall brunettes in crowds, caught himself staring too long at a pair of thick black glasses on the street. He’d chalked it up to an aesthetic appreciation, like some people had for favored patterns or shiny colors. Just a thing he was drawn to. All his life an amnesiac moth circling a Richie Tozier shaped flame.

“What changed for you?” his therapist asks. “Was it something related to going back to your home town?”

“I mean . . . maybe?” Eddie says. The answer is yes. “I guess I was way gayer as a kid than I thought and I kind of just forgot about that until I went back to Derry.”

“What do you mean by ‘way gayer as a kid?’”

“Um,” Eddie says. This is why he’s in therapy, to do the hard work. “I kind of realized I had . . . I had a crush on my best friend growing up. I had no fucking clue at the time, I thought that’s just how really strong friendships felt. I should have known because I didn’t feel like that for any of our other friends; I loved them but I wasn’t drawn to them in the same way. I thought he was annoying as shit and I hated his guts, but I also wanted to be around him all the time, which didn’t make sense because I was constantly talking about how much he pissed me off. I just wanted him to pay attention to me all the fucking time. And he did, that’s the worst part. He’d tease me and rile me up and I’d just lay into him constantly but it always just rolled off of him. He’d always call me these dumb nicknames, he’d just keep coming up with them, and I hated every single one but I didn’t, not really. Because it meant I was special. Sometimes he’d lean in and pinch my cheeks and call me ‘cute, cute, cute!’ and I didn’t know why I’d blush so fucking hard, why that got to me especially and why I’d always be flustered when I told him to knock it off. But now . . . now I know I wanted him to actually feel that way, to mean it when he called me cute, and it was scary to want that without even understanding what I wanted.”

“Did you ever consider he might not have been joking?” his therapist asks.

“No,” Eddie says dismissively. “That’s just how Richie was. He was big and constantly making grand gestures and pronouncements, and physical and affectionate, and it didn’t mean anything else than that.”

“Did he treat all of your friends like he treated you?”

“Not exactly, I guess,” Eddie stalls. “He did dumb nicknames for some people but with me it was really relentless. And he would not stop making these jokes about fucking my mom. It was really, really fucking annoying. And he never did that to anyone else. For some reason that was just me.”

“Hm,” his therapist says. 

Eddie blinks at her. “Do you think that means something?”

“I think it means that adolescents, especially male adolescents, have difficulty expressing complex emotions. Your fighting may have been a shield used to evade your feelings for each other, on his part as well as yours. However, it’s fruitless to ruminate on how he was feeling. We’re here to discuss how you feel. What I’m understanding is that as a child you had a homosexual attraction to your friend that you were unable to acknowledge because of the homophobia of your mother, and your subsequent repression of your childhood made it impossible for you to come to terms with your own sexuality as an adult. Does this sound right?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Eddie says.

“But all of this deals with how you felt then, not how you feel now. Unlike during your childhood you’re now aware of your own gayness and are able to act on it in a different way. You saw your old friend in your hometown and realized you had these latent feelings for him when you were young. Do you still have feelings for him?”

“I don’t fucking know!” Eddie exclaims. Then he sighs. He’s trying not to lie in therapy. “Okay, I do know. I still have big fucking feelings for him. It’s like I imprinted on him as an eight year old and no one has measured up the rest of my life, even when I couldn’t remember him. But I can never fucking tell him because he’s straight as shit, his entire goddamn career is based in making jokes around the girls he’s fucking, and it would ruin things and then I would have to move out and find a whole new living situation. Again.”

“He’s the person you moved in with?”

“Yeah he’s . . . he’s kinda the reason I’m in LA. When I left Myra I wanted to go to some place that felt like home and Richie feels like home.”

“You didn’t want to approach any of your other friends?”

“Well, I didn’t want to interrupt Ben and Bev’s honeymoon phase, and Mike’s on the road, and Bill and Audra are having problems, and I know it’s obvious that I came to Richie because I’m in love with him, but there are real logistical issues too, okay? Plus he offered. He’s the only one who offered. And it makes me fucking happy to live with him, and I’ll be happier being roommates with him for the rest of my life than ever being in a relationship again.”

“How would you feel if he entered a relationship?”

Eddie considers it. He’s obviously thought about this before. Richie is good-looking and famous; he was sure there were loads of women who wanted to date him. Just because Richie hadn’t mentioned anyone didn’t mean they didn’t exist. When he was still living in New York he’d internet stalked Richie’s ex-girlfriend Sandy; she was blonde and beautiful, and most importantly, a woman. 

“I would feel bad,” he admits. “I probably wouldn’t be able to live with him anymore.” If he overheard Richie having sex with someone else he would lose his goddamn mind.

“I would suggest trying to practice honesty, especially with Richie. Maybe you could even think about coming out. It sounds like you have an excellent group of people who love and support you, and you need to try trusting them. It doesn’t have to be Richie, you could do it to one of your other friends to work up to that. But if you’re committed to living your authentic self, if you’re able to acknowledge that you’re gay, you should work on sharing it with the people who love you.”

She looks at the clock on the wall. “That’s our time. I’ll see you next week. Your assignment for next session is to practice coming out. It doesn’t have to be to a real person; you could start by trying in a mirror or writing it down. But putting words to the secret shames we feel often makes them less scary. Naming a thing reduces its power.”

Eddie thinks of his friends cutting Pennywise down to size just by calling him a stupid clown. All he needed to do was make his fear of coming out small and strangleable.

He calls Bev on the drive home. They’ve been talking even more frequently since he left Myra, swapping divorce horror stories. He was able to admit his secret fears to her, that no one would ever want to be with him like Myra had, and that he’d fall apart at the first sign of stress without her to soothe him. She told him she sometimes still flinched whenever Ben moved too suddenly, and how sad it made him, and how upset she got with herself for making him sad, for not being able to let go of her fears even in the face of his overwhelming love. Eddie and Bev kept reminding each other it’s not their fault, it’s not their fault, they were raised by a toxic kind of love that permeated their all their relationships and left them with this fucking baggage. It felt nice to talk to someone who understood so deeply they didn’t even always have to use words.

She picks up on the second ring. “Hi Eddie,” she says brightly. He can tell she’s smiling. “I’m out walking the dog, what’s up?”

Eddie swallows. He should have practiced this ahead of time like his therapist suggested. The more he went through the motions of being brave the more he felt like he might actually be brave. He was just so tired of feeling the choking fear, that people were going to hate him and be disgusted by him, that he couldn’t stand it for one more minute. It was like when he left Myra, authenticity clawing its way out of him because he needed to be honest with someone himself for once in his life.

“I want to tell you something,” he says to her. “I haven’t told anyone else yet but I’m going to.”

“Is everything okay?” she asks, concern in her voice. 

“Everything’s fine, don’t worry. It’s a good thing. At least I hope it’s a good thing.” He takes a deep breath. “Bev, I’m . . . I’m gay.”

There’s a pause from the other end that Eddie can’t help but pour all his fear into. But then Bev’s voice comes through, choked with feeling. “Sweetie, I’m so proud of you,” she says. “I love you and I always will.”

Eddie sniffs. He didn’t anticipate being so emotional but he is. He was so scared that his friends would look at him differently, that he wouldn’t be the same Eddie to them. But like so many of his paranorias this one was founded in no real substance, just the rock of nameless fear that sometimes took up residence in Eddie’s chest. His friends would still loved him.

“Thank you,” he says, hoping Bev can’t hear the tears that threaten his voice. “That means so much to me, you don’t even know.”

“I understand how scary it is. I dated a woman in college. Well, sort of dated,” she tells him. “I didn’t have a label for it at the time but I think I’m bisexual. You’re not alone, Eddie. I’m here to feel these things with you.”

“I was just so tired of feeling scared,” he tells her. “I want to be my best self, and my best self doesn’t keep secrets from my friends.”

“You can tell me anything. You can tell any of us anything.”

“I just don’t know how the others are going to react. I mean, I just moved in with Richie. What if he doesn’t want me in his house anymore? Remember all the jokes he used to make about gay people when we were kids?”

“Yeah, and remember all the homophobic shit your mom would say to you that you’d spout?” Eddie shivers. 

“Yeah, please don’t remind me of that, I feel pretty fucked up about it in retrospect.” He’d gone on about AIDs transmission rates and avoiding exposure with a zeal unmatched by his other medical obsessions. Like if he knew all the facts he’d be safe.

“It’s not your fault,” Bev says quickly. “If anything, it was you being cruel to yourself. Derry left its mark on all of us. Your mom was planting that stuff in your head. And Richie was fifteen and had never met an out gay person in his life and didn’t know any better and neither did you. He’s changed since then; he’s still our Trashmouth but he’s not going to make fun of you for this. Or at least not in a malicious way. You should tell him; he’s not going to shut you out, or do anything to hurt you. He couldn’t.”

Eddie wishes he could believe her. But what if Richie never wants to touch him again? Or doesn’t want to share a house with him? 

“I’ll . . . I’ll think about it,” he tells Bev. “I just need to work up to it. Can you not tell anyone else? Except maybe Ben. I’m going to tell everyone eventually, I just have to figure out how.”

“Of course. I won’t even tell Ben; it’s your coming out and you deserve to tell your own story. But I’m here for you in whatever way you need. Let me know if you need help with how to come out to Richie.”

“Thanks, Bev. I love you,” he tells her. 

“I love you too, sweetie.”

They hang up, and Eddie continues his drive home. He’s going to tell Richie. Soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a lot of fun to write. I told my therapist I was basing this off of her and she said she hoped it was flattering (I obviously think she's a very good therapist).
> 
> Also this fic has really been getting away from me so I think the chapter count is going to continue to go up.
> 
> I'm on twitter [@beepbeepbxtch](https://twitter.com/beepbeepbxtch) and tumblr as [toziertool](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/toziertool). Always down to talk!


	5. love is an ocean that i can't forget

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie and Eddie go to the beach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from 'Take Me to the River'
> 
> Warning: use of the f slur

It’s a week or so before he feels like he can say anything to Richie. He’s had another therapy session after coming out to Bev and his therapist's reassurances that he was making good progress and she was happy with the steps he’s taking is enough to at least partially buoy him up with confidence that things could be okay. 

It’s a Saturday morning and Eddie’s going for a run. When he was in New York, he stuck strictly to weights and the elliptical. It seemed too freeing to run, like he’d be letting something loose inside himself he couldn’t put back. And running in New York seemed intimidating. He didn’t know where he’d go; he didn’t want to run on pavement, surrounded by ugly buildings and avoiding piles of dog shit. But since he moved to LA running has been one of the healthy habits he’d been trying to cultivate with the guidance of therapy. He liked the burn in his lungs, how he could feel the muscles in his legs stretch. Instead of the assault of smells and sounds he’d hear in New York there’s nothing but the slap on his feet on the road and the slight scent of flowers in the air.

While working out he decides that this is the day. He’ll put it off forever if he gives himself the chance. He practices saying the words as he runs down the street, huffing them between breaths. “Richie, you should know that I’m gay,” he tries out. “Richie, recently I figured out that I’m gay. Richie, I am a giant homosexual, a big flaming queer.” None of these sound quite right. 

He gets home and stands over the sink, chugging a glass of water. He doesn’t know if Richie is up; it takes the man forever to get out of bed. Eddie decides to go shower while he waits for him to stumble into the kitchen. He can feel the sweat sticking to his skin and he doesn’t want to worry about how bad he smells during this conversation.

When he comes back out Richie is in the kitchen making coffee. He claimed he’d never use the french press because it was “too fucking fancy,” but Eddie sees it sitting out on the counter. 

“Hey Spaghetti,” Richie says when he enters. “I was thinking we could go to the beach today. It makes the rest of LA’s bullshit worthwhile. We can smuggle in some beer in paper bags, make seagulls fight over fries. The classics.”

“Sounds good,” Eddie says absently. He wonders if Richie will still want to be around him half naked after he finds out. He certainly wouldn’t touch Eddie while they’re at the beach, sliding up behind him in the water to dunk him or spreading sunscreen on his back. Eddie shivers. He’s not supposed to let his mind go to these places.

“Seriously?” Richie asks. “‘Sounds good’? No comment on the name? I figured you’d bitch at me about the increased risk of skin cancer and how sand gets fucking everywhere.”

“It doesn’t matter. And the beach sounds great. Everything is . . . great,” Eddie says. Richie looks at him with confusion. “Okay Spagheds, whatever you say. I’ll get the supplies together like the beach bum I am.” 

He’ll tell Richie at the beach, so if he needed to he could run off into the water and drown himself.

\---

They make their way to Leo Carillo, Eddie sporting a pair of Richie’s swim trunks. Richie had laughed his ass off at how far they came down Eddie’s thighs before Eddie told him if he wouldn’t shut the fuck up he wasn’t going at all. 

They drive down the highway in Richie’s convertible, top down and music blasting. Richie has control of the playlist and is loudly singing along; _"‘Show me show me how you do that trick, the one that makes me scream she said.’"_ The Cure had been Richie’s absolute favorite band when they were kids. Eddie loved that that had stayed the same about him.

He asks something he’s been thinking about since his cross country move. “Did you forget your music taste when you left Derry? Like we forgot everything else?”

“Not really,” Richie says. “I mean, I took all my tapes with me to college so it was kinda hard to forget. But I’d have weird emotional reactions to songs I couldn’t explain. Like, I was at a party and I heard ‘Sunday Morning,’ and I felt this tingling all over, like something was on the tip of my tongue but I couldn’t reach it. Remember how I’d play that for you in the mornings I slept over after I snuck in through your window?”

Eddie did remember. While he was still asleep Richie would slip his headphones over his ears and play the song, starting it soft and turning it slowly louder as Eddie woke up more and more. If Eddie was facing the edge of the bed Richie would get in, putting the walkman on the sheets between them. Then, when Eddie was fully up, he’d say goodbye and scramble back out of the window before Eddie’s mom could catch him. 

Even though Richie always left way too early it had been Eddie’s favorite way to wake up.

“I always made sure I had that tape on me when I went to your place. I listened to it so many times that I think it left a permanent mark on my brain. After I heard that song I left the party and went home and I listened to the whole album, really sat down and listened, and the entire time I felt like I should have been biking somewhere. I guess it makes sense now.”

Richie’s hair whips around in the breeze, flying in every direction. Eddie can’t stop looking at how big his hands look on the wheel, how his knuckles strain against his skin and his fingers wrap all the way around.

“I had that too,” Eddie says. “I’d get really mad when I heard Nirvana. Like, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ would play somewhere and I’d just have this instinct to snap at whoever was playing it to turn it the fuck off.”

“Oh my god, you hated that whole album,” Richie says. “‘Richie, if I have to hear Kurt Cobain’s whiny voice one more time, I will lose it, I will smash that tape and no one can stop me.’”

“Because it was bad! Nirvana is bad! Just because they were groundbreaking doesn’t mean they were a good band.”

“You have no soul for rock and roll, Eds.”

When they get to the beach it’s crowded and Eddie has a moment of panic. All of these people with their dirty children, running around kicking up sand mites. But Richie leads him off the beaten path till they find a quiet spot mostly inhabited by adults. Richie spreads out the towels they brought and settles in, leaning back on his arms and facing the sun.

“This is it, Eds,” he says. “This is the life. Pacific Coast all the way for me baby.”

Eddie plops down beside him. “If you don’t put on sunscreen you’re going to burn.”

“You offering to apply it on me? Big strong hands protecting my delicate pale skin? C’mon, I’m sure you have a magic touch.”

This unfortunately hits a little too close to his own desires for Eddie's comfort. “Apply it yourself,” he says gruffly. “You must have those gargantuan orangutan arms for a reason. I bet you’re the only person in the world who can reach that middle spot on your back.”

“Maybe that’s true, my darling little dew drop, but then who’s gonna take care of you? You gonna dump some sunscreen down and roll around in it?”

Fuck. Eddie hadn’t considered that he’d also need a dose of sun protection. And he really, really didn’t want to burn. He found the sensation of peeling skin immensely unpleasant. And it would look incredibly suspicious if he didn’t let Richie touch him. Hopefully this wouldn’t make his confession later too awkward. 

“Fine,” he says, reaching to take his shirt off. “We can do each other.”

Is it just his imagination or does Richie make a weird little choking sound? He’s caught up in the fabric of his t-shirt so he doesn’t see the other man’s face, and by the time he emerges it’s couched in studied blankness. 

It’s a stunning day, the sun bright and hot, barely obscured by cotton candy clouds. The waves, while not enormous, roll in peaks that would come up at least midway on Eddie. The froth they leave on the shore crashes white and clean, foaming against the smooth sand before pulling back again. The water is a soft blue, nothing like the hard grey waters of New York. The breeze just barely ruffles through his hair. He’d stopped putting gel in it since moving to LA and it’s just a little bit curly at the ends.

Suddenly Eddie remembers his scar. His right side is a mess of knotted tissue, his body all mangled looking from where Pennywise punctured him. He hates how it mars the body he spent so long trying to control. He hunches in on himself, self-consciously covering the scar by hugging his arm close to his body and grasping it tight, hiding how ugly the mark is. 

“Don’t,” he hears from off to the side. 

Eddie turns away from the water to find Richie staring at him. His face is less guarded than before. There’s something infinitely soft around his eyes. He gestures at Eddie’s wound. “You don’t have to cover it.”

“Yeah I do, it’s gruesome.”

“I like it. I like seeing it. The scar means that you lived.”

Eddie can’t say anything for a second. Richie glows a little under the full light of the sun. It catches the golden flecks in his curls and they glint and shimmer. He’s so quiet, just breathing gently as he looks back at Eddie. ‘He’s so fucking beautiful,’ Eddie thinks to himself.

And then Richie breaks it because of course he does. “And I mean, c’mon, scars are fucking badass, be proud of your battle wounds. Sure, everyone thinks you were dumb enough to go into a condemned building and get skewered when it collapsed, but it still looks cool. Plus, women love scars, so you’ll be pulling in the babes.”

Eddie’s throat tightens. Babes. He wonders if Richie would say the same thing about guys digging scars, if he’d still joke around with him when he knew the truth. He clears his throat instead of responding. “You gonna get it over with?” he says, gesturing to the bottle in Richie’s hands. Richie looks down at the sunscreen. “Oh, yeah, that,” he says. He clears his throat. “Better get on with it.”

Eddie lays face down on the towel. He was surprised Richie had beach towels. He wasn’t, however, surprised that they were covered in images of Scooby-Doo. But they were soft and, most importantly, clean (or at least Richie has assured him they were). He braces for the impact of Richie’s hands. He expects him to squirt a large blob right in the center of his back and then just kind of push it all around. Instead, he feels Richie’s palms gently smoothing down his shoulders. He hasn’t put too much on his hands, just enough to coat Eddie’s skin in a thin protective layer. The sunscreen feels slightly tacky but smells like coconut. Richie’s hands are soft as they spread the sunscreen in gentle strokes down Eddie’s back. He can’t help but let out a little sigh.

“Did you ever go to the beach when you were in New York?” Richie asks suddenly.

“No, never,” Eddie replies. “Myra was too self conscious of her body to ever want to go and I could never get up the courage to go alone. It seemed too dangerous; if you get in the water you could get caught by a riptide and drown. If you leave your stuff to go swim it could get stolen. And even with sunscreen there’s an increased chance of skin cancer. It all just seemed way too messy.”

“There’s a beach in New York I’ve always wanted to go to,” Richie says.

“How do you know beaches in New York?” Eddie asks.

“I had a six month stint writing for SNL. I left because I got into a fight with a cast member and everyone else took his fucking side. But yeah, I spent the winter of 2004 in a shitty studio apartment in the village.”

“That’s so fucking weird we were in the city at the same time and didn’t know each other. What if we walked past each other on the street?”

“I feel like if I saw you I would have remembered you,” Richie says. “I don’t know how I ever forgot your face in the first place.”

“I agree. I mean, how could I have forgotten a face as ugly as yours?” Eddie says.

“You wound me, Eds, truly you do.” Richie pats the small of his back. “Okay, you’re done. Promise I didn’t spell out ‘fucknut’’ in sunscreen on your back.

“Don’t call me that. And you better fucking not have,” Eddie says, getting up. “I guess it’s your turn.”

“Guess it is,” Richie says. “Let’s do this.”

Richie shrugs off his truly awful tropical shirt and pulls his t-shirt over his head, and Eddie tries desperately not to stare. His first thought is _'I know I made fun of him earlier but holy shit his arms are enormous.’_ His second thought is _‘I need him to throw me down on a bed with those arms.’_ His third thought is _‘Get it together Kaspbrak.’_

Eddie clears his throat. “Lie down,” he tells Richie. The other man does, crossing his arms in front of his face and resting his head on them like a pillow. His arms are covered in thick dark hair, something Eddie never thought he would be into but apparently is something that he’s super turned on by. Or maybe that’s just what everything about Richie does to him. 

Eddie doesn’t know what’s worse, being sunscreened up by Richie or sunscreening Richie. When Richie was touching him he was so fucking tense he was sure the other man could feel it in his shoulders. But when he lotions up his hand and makes the first pass over Richie’s back all he can think is ‘I love touching him. I want to do this all the time.’ His skin is warm, and even though there’s a smattering of hair on his back, it’s soft where it runs against Eddie’s fingers. 

Richie is uncharacteristically quiet. Eddie can’t bear it, can’t bear having no distraction from the feeling of his palms against Richie’s back. So he asks, “What was the beach you wanted to go to?”

“Oh. It’s called Jacob Riis, down by the Rockaways.”

“Why did you never make it?”

“Well, I was there in the middle of the fucking winter. It just started getting warm when I left, which fucking sucked. New York in the winter is brutal. And I guess I could have gone to the beach in the winter if I wanted the abandoned, desolate experience. But I didn’t want that, I wanted to go to the damn beach, not the set from _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind._ So I never went.”

“Why Jacob Riis?” Eddie asks. 

Richie laughs a little. “Dunno, just sounded . . . special.”

“I should’ve gone when I lived there. There’s so many things I missed out on doing in the city because I was too afraid of what might happen.”

“You can always do it when you go back for all your divorce shit. Give yourself something to look forward to.”

“That’s a good idea, Rich,” Eddie says. It really is a good idea. That way he won’t be entirely fucking miserable when he goes.

He thinks for one second about inviting Richie but quickly brushes it off. Why would Richie want to come to New York with him? Eddie would be spending most of his time in meetings with Myra, or crashing from tense exhaustion. It wasn’t explicitly romantic to go on a trip with someone, but it pushed up against the platonic bonds of their relationship.

“Here,” Eddie says, wiping the excess sunscreen on his chest. “I wrote ‘Trashmouth’ out on your back so everyone will know who you are.”

“You underestimate fame, Eddie baby. Everyone already knows who I am.”

“The C-list has really gone to your head, huh?”

“Laugh it up now, but wait till they put you as an answer as the crossword puzzle at the back of People magazine. Then you know you’ve made it.”

“Sure, Richie. Keep telling yourself that.”

They put sunscreen on the parts of their body they can reach with their own hands, then both settle back comfortably.

Eddie squints up at the sky. “I wish we had an umbrella,” he says. “We’re exposing ourselves to so many unnecessary UV rays.”

“Nah, a little radiation is good for you,” Richie says. “Boosts the immune system.”

“You’re so full of shit,” Eddie responds. 

“I am the shit, Eds,” Richie says, pulling out a pair of Raybans and putting his glasses aside.

“How can you see out of those?” Eddie asks. 

“Prescription lenses, Spagheds,” Richie tells him. “Sunglasses are crucial to LA. Both in vibe and practicality.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that,” Eddie mutters. He’s still squinting.

“Here,” Richie says, reaching into their beach bag. “I brought an extra pair.”

Eddie is momentarily touched before he sees the sunglasses. “I’m not fucking wearing those,” he tells Richie.

Richie smirks. “Then I guess you’re gonna have a face full of sun all day.”

“Fine,” Eddie grumbles, plucking the sunglasses out of his hands. “But you’re not allowed to take any pictures.”

He settles the red sparkly heart shaped glasses on his face. His eyes feel immediately better but he also feels ridiculous. He looks back over at Richie, who’s smirking. 

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie says. 

“Sure thing, Lolita,” Richie tells him. “Just need a lollipop to complete the look and you’re all set.”

“I’m surprised you know who that is. I thought you prided yourself on being a cretin.”

“Eds, everyone in America knows who Lolita is. Maybe the world.”

“Don’t call me Eds,” he says automatically. “And don’t call me Lolita either.”

“Whatever you say, Lolit-Eds.”

They both stretch out on their towels in silence for a bit. Richie’s brought one of Bill’s books, and is making his way through it steadily. Eddie didn’t bring anything. He just wanted to let his brain shut off for a while, let the thoughts go. Maybe bask in the sun.

He should have known that was a fucking mistake. It has the opposite effect instead, and he works himself into a mess of anxiety about what he plans to tell Richie. He squirms, unable to find a totally comfortable spot. Eventually he starts playing with the sand, letting it run through his fingers. It feels smooth and warm, slipping down until it forms little piles on the beach, indistinguishable from the rest. 

“Get up,” Richie says suddenly. “Let’s go in the water.”

“Aren’t you worried about our stuff?” Eddie asks.

“Nah,” Richie responds. “I left my phone and wallet in the car, and so did you, and if we just put a towel over the rest no one will ever see it. Now let’s go get wet.”

Eddie trusts Richie but is still wary. He keeps glancing back as they make their way to the edge of the water.

“Hey,” Richie says, catching his hand. “The worst thing that happens is someone takes it. And it’s just stuff. We can replace any of it.”

Richie’s hand in his feels reassuring and warm, like he’s there’s a pulse that goes up through Eddie’s arm straight to the nerves in his chest, pushing aside the heavy lump he feels there. 

“Thanks,” he says, not making eye contact. He can’t tell if Richie is looking at him and he doesn’t want him to be seen by the intimacy of eye contact when he gets anxious. “I know you’re right, it’s just sometimes . . .”

“You can’t convince your brain? Look, I fucking get it. But try and trust me just this once in your goddamn life when I say that nothing bad can happen to you here. Now lets fucking go!” he says, dropping Eddie’s hand. He runs straight into the water, waves battering against him. He dives in with little to no grace but fearlessly and with endless enthusiasm. When he emerges his hair is streaming over his face, getting into his eyes and plastering itself to the side of his head. He clutches his Raybans on with both hands as he tries to escape a coming wave.

“Don’t lose those!” Eddie calls out from the shore. “I know they were expensive!”

“I’m not gonna lose them,” Richie yells back. “Plus, if I do, I’ll just buy more. I’m a celebrity, remember?”

“You never fucking let me forget it,” Eddie says. He sticks his toes cautiously in the water. It’s warm, and from this distance all it does is lap against his feet.

Eddie can’t move any further. He’s never been in the ocean before. Suddenly it seems so vast, like if he steps in he’ll be washed out to the point beyond the horizon without even knowing it. He’d float forever in the middle of the waves, no one coming to find him or save him.

Getting into a body of water paled in comparison to fighting a demon space clown but he found himself equally paralyzed by both. He logically understood that at least the demon space clown was worth being afraid of, but that didn’t make his fear of getting into the ocean lessen. He could latch onto the smallest little thing to be afraid of, spiraling it beyond proportion until it consumed him. But he was slowly learning to invalidate his fears, to unravel the web woven by his mother that perpetually trapped him in the worst case. The only way to remove the fear was to do the thing. ‘You’re braver than you think,’ flashes through his mind.

He moves with purpose deeper into the water. He can smell the salt, the top level of the water reflecting the sun and bouncing back in undulating patterns.

“Look out!” Richie yells right before the first wave crashes over him. It comes up to his hips, pushing him back a little. The water is warm, not quite a bathtub, but not nearly as bracing as the quarry had been. The next wave thunks him in the chest solidly and carries him a little, lifting his feet off the bottom. Eddie feels his stomach swoop a little bit, but he likes the feeling of being weightless.

He makes his way further, his toes having a harder and harder time reaching the bottom. Eventually, he’s just treading water, feet pedaling lazily. The waves rock him up and down without overwhelming him, leaving him bobbing gently. He’d taken off the ridiculous sunglasses so he didn’t lose them swimming and the water reflects into his eyes just a little bit. He almost doesn’t mind; looking at the world through sunglasses was like looking at everything with a grey tint and he’s tired of seeing the world as grey.

Looking around, he can’t see Richie. He starts to panic for a moment. What if a riptide has dragged him out to sea? What if his muscles had become fatigued and he’d just slipped down beneath the waves? How recently had he eaten? Was he cramping?

“Richie,” he calls out. No response. “Richie!” he says louder.

Just as he’s on the brink of panic he feels a sudden force tug on his legs, yanking him underwater. When his head passes under the surface all sound cuts out, leaving him in a little bubble. He can feel himself drift down until his body’s natural buoyancy shoots him up again. He breaks the water, sputtering, only to find Richie grinning at him, hair slicked back away from his face, clutching onto his sunglasses with one hand. 

“What the fuck,” Eddie yells. “You are so fucking stupid and dangerous, what if I’d kicked you in the face and knocked you unconscious and then you sank to the bottom of the ocean and died? Who’s fault would that be?”

“Still yours,” Richie says. “For just being so damn tempting.”

Eddie’s heart rate has finally calmed down. He glares at Richie, shaking water from his hair. “Don’t ever pull that shit again.”

“Never again.” Eddie’s glower doesn’t falter. “Scout’s honor,” Richie says, holding up three fingers.

“They’d never make you a scout in a million years,” Eddie retorts.

“Yeah, but Stan taught me everything he knew, so I’m an honorary scout.”

“If by ‘teaching’ you mean showing you knots until you accidentally tied your hands together, then yeah, Stan taught you. Stan taught you great.”

“Yeah,” says Richie, looking out into the distance. “Stan taught me a lot of things.”

Eddie’s quiet. Richie’s drifted off into a rare distant solemnity. They hadn’t really talked much about Stan, just a brief discussion a little after Eddie arrived to confirm they got identical letters. Eddie wanted to talk about Stan more. He wanted to celebrate him without being so sad.

“He would have been proud of you,” Richie said. “Stan, I mean. At least judging by his fucking letter. He told us to be who we wanted to be, and you’re doing that. You’re taking control of what you want your life to look like. Not many people can say that.”

Eddie remembers another part of Stan’s letter: ‘If you find someone worth holding onto, never, ever, let them go.’ He thinks about how he’s resolved to hold onto Richie for the rest of his life, if Richie will let him. He doesn’t say any of this aloud.

‘Be proud,’ Stan had written.

“Richie, I have to tell you something,” Eddie says. He can hear his heart beat in his ears, his body under the water feeling impossibly cold despite the surrounding warmth. He has to do this.

“Yeah?” Richie sounds almost nervous, though Eddie has no idea why he’d be nervous. “What is it?”

Eddie takes a deep breath. “I’mgay,” he says in a rush.

Richie blinks at him. “What?”

“I said I’m gay,” Eddie shouts, and immediately shoots himself underneath the water. 

He’s immensely grateful for the lack of noise. Down here, he can pretend like he didn’t just altered irreparably the most important friendship in his life. He’s safe down here. He’s counting the seconds he’s under, the trapped breath in his lungs creating a grounding pressure in his chest cavity. 29, 30 . . .

He feels water ripple against him. Then a pair of hands take his. They curl around the outside of his fingers, enveloping his whole hand within their own. Eddie almost wants to open his eyes but he’s terrified of the type of contamination he could get in his eyeballs. 

The hands gently tug him up, leading him to break the surface. He gasps when he comes up, the sudden air rushing into his lungs.

Richie is glaring at him. “Don’t fucking scare me like that, Jesus, you just went down and I didn’t know where you went.”

“Now you know how I feel all the time,” Eddie grumbles. He feels a little embarrassed; it’s terribly immature to say something important and then immediately flee the scene. He just couldn’t be there for Richie’s reaction.

They tread water for a minute. Eddie will not look at Richie. He doesn’t want to see the expression on the other man’s face.

“So . . . you’re gay,” Richie says eventually.

“Yes,” Eddie tells him. “At least, I think I’m gay? I don’t think I’ve ever been attracted to a woman.”

“But you’re attracted to men.”

Eddie blushes furiously but still shoots him a glare. “Yes, dickwad, that’s what being gay means."

“No, trust me, I know what being gay mean, I’m just trying to get this straight. Ha! ‘Get this straight,’ get it, Eds?"

“Do not call me that. And that was terrible. Truly atrocious.”

“I’m in the middle of completely new material, okay? Give me a damn break.”

They don’t say anything for another second. Until Richie goes “Thanks for telling me. I’m glad, you know. Not glad that you’re gay. Fuck, I didn’t mean that. I’m not not glad that you’re gay. It’s a good thing, it’s totally a good thing. I mean I’m glad that you told me.”

Eddie doesn’t quite know what to say. He eventually settles on, “Thanks.” He pauses for a second before continuing. “So this . . . this isn’t weird for you?”

“No, it’s really not weird, it’s so-fuck, I don’t wanna make this moment about me, but I have something to say too.”

Eddie can’t breathe. He’d wanted to make his confession and be done with it. He didn’t want to open up a whole fucking dialogue where he could say anything, expose himself in any myriad of ways.

Richie takes his sunglasses off. His face is twisted up in a mess of anxiety, and Eddie feels his own breath quicken in response. He wants to absorb everything the other man is feeling, take it in on himself instead of letting it course through Richie, but he’s thrumming so full of his own anxiety he doesn’t think he has the room inside him.

“I’ve been so fucking scared him whole life,” Richie starts. “I wanted everyone to pay attention to me so they’d only see the things I wanted them to see and not notice what I wanted to hide. Because what I wanted to hide would make you all hate me and never look at me again. And I needed you . . . I need all of you to keep looking at me. I was so afraid of you hating me. But you’re so fucking brave and I could never hate you. So I really hope you don’t hate me when I tell you . . . I haven’t actually been fucking your mom all these years.”

“You absolute dick,” Eddie says. “I am trying so fucking hard to be serious for once and you can’t, just even for one second-”

“I’ve been fucking your dad.”

Eddie’s mouth snaps to a close. “My dad died before we ever became friends,” is the only thing he can think to say. 

“Not really latching onto the gist of it, Eds.”

Eddie still doesn’t say anything. He can’t even think clearly enough to tell Richie not to call him Eds.

“What I am trying to say here is . . . me too. I’m. Y’know. Gay. I’m also gay.”

All of the sound around Eddie has somehow become amplified, the crashing of the waves and the cawing of the gulls coming through his ears with sharp clarity. The entire world seems different. There’s a new context around reality, a new lens through which he’s viewing everything around him. He wants to bask in the shift around him, slowly re-calibrate his previous world, but he can’t let his thoughts get away from himself. 

“Yeah, you really fucking stole my thunder there,” he says. “If you do that when I come out to the rest of the Losers I’ll kill you.”

Richie snorts. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he says. “I’ll make them throw you a whole coming out party if you want, a celebration of you and your gayness and none others. Put you in a little rainbow party hat, serenade you with Diana Ross.”

“I’d kill you for that too,” Eddie says. “No parties. In fact, maybe I’ll just send around a memo. Honestly, probably just say something in the group text.”

“So fucking boring, you’re killing me here. I think I’m gonna hire a girl in a fake cake to pop up holding a real cake that says ‘Richie Tozier: Confirmed Homosexual.’”

“Shouldn’t it be a guy in a fake cake?” Eddie says.

“Fuck, that would make it gayer, you’re right,” Richie says. There’s a pause before he asks, “Have you told any of the others?”

“Just Bev,” Eddie admits.

Richie laughs a little. When Eddie looks at him he just says, “Same.”

“Bev knows all,” Eddie says.

“I think Bev knew even before I told her. She won’t admit it, but I think she’s known since we were kids. I was posturing so hard all the fucking time but she saw through that shit. And I’ll never really know, I guess, but I’m pretty sure Stan knew. He’d never say anything but there were just . . . there were just moments I knew he understood.” 

Eddie doesn’t want to ask what he means. He’d understood so little when they were kids. 

“Thanks for telling me,” he says. “I know it’s fucking hard.”

“Yeah, it still feels a little crazy to say out loud,’ Richie responds, putting his sunglasses back on. “Hopefully it’ll get easier with practice. ‘I’m a fag.’ See? Came out nice and smooth.”

“Jesus, Rich, don’t fucking call yourself that,” Eddie says. Hearing that phrase out of Richie’s mouth shocks him. It brings back every ugly thing his mom said, that Henry Bowers said, that he thought about himself. It reminds him of the shame he’d never understood but known for his whole life.

“What? It’s a whole re-appropriation thing. Call yourself it before they can call you it.” 

“Just don’t fucking say it, okay?” Eddie snaps. He doesn’t want this spoiled. He doesn’t want the Derry imposed self hatred to cling onto him and Richie any more than it has already. “Maybe you’ve passed the point in your processing or whatever where you can remember how shit people have been our whole lives and laugh it off but I’m not. I remember how awful everyone in Derry was, just casually, just all the time, and it was brutal. I couldn’t own up to being gay my whole life because of people calling me names like that and I want to be done with that fear. And that’s a big part of way I shoved down being gay because I just couldn’t take it, I couldn’t take it on top of everything else. I couldn’t be the weak sick kid and the gay kid because if they were right about the gay thing maybe they were right about all of it. So can you not make this fucking harder please?”

Richie goes quiet. “Beep beep Richie,” he mutters to himself. When Eddie doesn’t respond he says, “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, okay? I’m not past that in my processing. Obviously I’m not. It’s just . . . it’s how I deal with shit. You fucking know that.”

“Yeah, I know that,” Eddie says. “But it sucks. Can you just . . . can you just be gentle with yourself?”

It’s the softest thing he could have said and he knows that but he can’t regret it. It’s something this therapist had said to him early on in their sessions. He was talking about the fake medications he took as a kid, how he kept taking them after he knew they were fake. How even though he’d stood tall outside Neibolt House and thrown his fanny pack away he’d slunk back for it in shame later. He’d kept taking the medication partially to keep the peace with his mom, but there was a part of him, the part that he knew was sick, was really truly sick in a way no one could understand, that still clutched for his inhaler when he was out of breath even though he rationally knew he didn’t have asthma. He told her how he felt so stupid and helpless in the face of his own lifelong delusion every time he took a hit of what he knew was mostly water but couldn’t stop himself.

She’d looked at him, gaze level. “There were many factors affecting your perception of your own health and the world around you that you couldn’t possibly have controlled. Your mother made you believe there was something wrong with you when there never was. That doesn’t make you weak or stupid. It’s important to take the space to hold yourself in gentleness.”

Eddie had never considered being gentle to himself before. He berated himself and feared himself but rarely was he kind to himself. The world wasn’t gentle so why should he be?

But he doesn’t want Richie to feel the way he makes himself feel. Richie doesn’t deserve that. Eddie wants to make the world into a place that’s gentle just so it can be gentle for Richie, and if he has to start with getting Richie to be gentle with himself he’ll start there. Even though saying it out loud feels like he’s exposed a nerve, his feelings for Richie raw and immediately visible. 

But instead Richie breathes out softly and says, “I’ll try,” followed almost hesitantly by “Thank you,” and everything feels okay in a way it didn’t before.

They make their way out of the water, their things undisturbed as Richie had promised. The sun has dipped a little bit lower, angled above the ocean, but it’s still bright outside. Richie sprawls on his towel, shaking water out of his hair.

“You’re like a dog,” Eddie tells him.

“I am that bitch,” Richie says. 

They settle back into bickering comfortably. Eventually they stop snarking and just talk. They go back and forth on the things they’ve missed, swapping stories. Richie tells him about being in his 20’s and broke, going from gig to gig in the back of someone’s van. Eddie wishes he had more interesting things to tell him, but as he rattles off anecdotes about the shit he’s seen in New York he feels like Richie’s really listening, laughing hard when Eddie punctuates a story with a particularly vehement word choice. 

Eventually the sun dips towards the ocean. They make the decision to pack up and go home, shaking sand from their belongings. The beach is emptier as they make their way back towards the car, young people congregating for the beginning of what Eddie can only assume are beach keggers. Instead of the envy he normally feels when he sees young people enjoying what he missed out on, he’s just happy they’re out here being joyous and alive.

When they get back to the car Richie gets the top back down and throws their belongings in the backseat. He reaches into the glove compartment and emerges with his phone. Turning away from the car, he walks closer to the water, and starts taking photos of the sun setting over the beach. Eddie hops in the passenger seat, checking his own phone. Then he takes a moment to just look over to the water. The sun is the same orange red as metal being heated in a forge, and it casts an ombré wash of pink and purple in the clouds. He wonders how much of California’s attraction lies in the sun setting in the West, right over the ocean. Because the way Eddie feels, looking at the infinite water and the warm sun, is almost religious.

Turning away, he sees Richie by his door, phone still out. It’s angled just a little too vertically for Richie to have been texting. “What are you doing?” Eddie asks suspiciously. 

“Drinking in the view,” Richie says smirking. “Never could resist a ball of bright glowing light.”

“Don’t look directly at the sun,” Eddie tells him. “You’ll go blind. Blinder.”

“That’s why I’m looking directly at you instead. Twice the shine, only half as much danger,” Richie says, going around the front of the car and getting in the driver’s seat. He fiddles with his phone a second before dropping into the cup holder. He reaches one arm around the back of Eddie’s seat, craning his neck around to back out of their parking spot. Eddie tries not to stare at the stretch of his bicep, even covered as it is by that truly atrocious tropical shirt. 

He’s distracted by the buzz of his phone. Picking it up, he sees Richie has sent a photo to their group chat. It’s him, sitting in the car. He’s in profile, sun glancing off his cheekbones. He looks deeply content, just the tiniest bit of a smile in the corner of his mouth. He’s unfortunately still wearing the Lolita sunglasses but they don’t look nearly as stupid as he imagined they did. They fit his face at least.

Mike responds first.

**Nice to see someone else enjoying the sun**

Bev chimes in,

_Eddie you look lovely!! Hope you guys are having fun._

Eddie lingers a moment, then saves the photo to his phone. He wants to remember this day.

They whip down the road in Richie’s convertible. Richie drives just a little too fast but Eddie likes it, and he thinks Richie knows he likes it. The golden hour casts a glow over everything, especially Richie. He’s handsome, he’s beautiful, he’s everything Eddie ever wanted, and Eddie can’t believe he’s driving them back to the home they both live in, even if Eddie wants more. _‘This is enough, this is enough,’_ thrums in his head, and Richie makes him so goddamn happy all the time he can almost convince himself of that. 

“Hey, Eds?” Richie asks suddenly. “How did you know you were gay?”

Eddie freezes. Does Richie suspect, and is trying to just get him to admit it, to say it out loud. He can’t face that, face Richie cornering him into confessing his huge gay revelation was sitting right next to him. “I’m not answering that,” he says instead. “You asked, you should go first.”

“Well, I don’t wanna answer it either,” Richie says.

“Fine, I’ll tell you when you tell me,” Eddie retorts, crossing his arms. He doesn’t know what Richie has to be so fucking cagey about.

“Okay, fair,” Richie tells him. “But like, did you know when we were kids?”

Eddie huffs. “No,” he confesses. “I had no idea until recently.”

“Oh,” is all Richie says. The sun has dipped down further, casting shadows on his face. He looks almost-sad? Eddie doesn’t know why.

They’re both quiet on the way home. When they get back to the house Richie disappears into his room, claiming the need for a long shower. Eddie doesn’t see him again for the rest of the evening, which makes him feel unsettled. He doesn’t know what he could have done to upset Richie but the man has clearly retreated. He makes himself a simple dinner and heads to bed early. When he dreams, he dreams of the hammock, sunlight coming through the gaps in the clubhouse, Richie’s warm hand resting on his calf. He wakes up in the middle of the night gasping, and he has trouble getting back to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jacob Riis is a real beach in New York City! It was historically a spot where gay men to cruise in the 70's, and still is a queer gathering place
> 
> I am projecting my hatred of Nirvana onto Eddie
> 
> Come talk to me on twitter at [@beepbeepbxtch](https://twitter.com/beepbeepbxtch) and tumblr as [toziertool](https://toziertool.tumblr.com/)


	6. i'm startin' over in another place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bill and Eddie get brunch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from 'What a Day That Was'

Eddie and Bill are sitting outside in a little cafe, getting brunch. Brunch had never been something Eddie did before leaving New York but it was yet another thing he’d come to enjoy. Now he knows he likes mimosas, and pancakes slathered in the butter he used to not allow himself. He likes the leisure of spending several hours doing nothing but relaxing and, in the case of today, enjoying the sunshine. 

Bill’s been away accompanying Audra on her latest film shoot, so this is the first time he and Eddie have seen each other since the latter’s move to LA. Bill looks good, more settled in himself, his gray streak making him look distinguished instead of old. His stutter had dissipated when they’d left Derry, the absence of Pennywise returning to his voice as it had been for the past twenty odd years. Eddie inquires how his marriage is going, and Bill tells him that things are better. The secret of what happened in Derry still hung over their relationship, since there was no way to explain the truth of what really went on in their hometown. But they’ve slowly been unraveling the other problems in their marriage, a painstaking process that Bill nevertheless seems invested in. Although Eddie knows cutting and running was the right move with his own relationship, he’s impressed with Bill’s commitment to Audra and their life together.

Having done this twice already, Eddie’s a little more practiced at coming out. Nevertheless, he’s still a little nervous as he gears up for his confession. When they reach a natural lull in the conversation, he puts down his fork. “Bill, I should tell you something,” he says.

Bill looks at him, a serious look on his face. “Okay, go ahead.”

“I’ve recently realized I’m gay. And I just wanted to let you know.”

Bill continues to look at him levelly. “Yes,” he says.

Eddie stares blankly at him. “What do you mean, yes? You knew?” is all he can think to say. 

Bill emits a little sigh. “Eddie, we’ve been friends since we were four. I’ve pretty much always known that you were gay. Or at least for as long as I’ve known what being gay meant.” 

Eddie realizes with a horrible shock that Bill was his first crush. It had been the start of kindergarten. Bill had seen him standing off to the side at playtime, not wanting to get in and run around with the other kids and get messy. Eddie’s mom had warned him so many times before he left the house that other children were dangerous and they carried so many strange diseases, you never knew where they’d been, and it was best to stay six feet away at all times. So he’d kept distant, not meeting anyone’s eye. But Bill came over. He’d walked away from whatever game he’d been playing with the other kids and stood next to Eddie.

“What’s your nuh-nuh-name?” Bill asked. Eddie didn’t respond.

“I’m Bill Duh-denborough,” Bill had said, and extended his hand in a childish facsimile of the adult gesture he must have seen his parents do. Eddie looked at the proffered limb with fear. Bill didn’t retreat. 

“My mommy says I’m not supposed to touch the other kids,” Eddie whispered. “There might be germs.”

“Oh,” Bill had a quizzical look upon his little face for a second, little eyebrows furrowed. “Wuh-wuh-well, I can fix that. We duh-don’t have to touch.” 

He brought his hand back to his body and instead extended his elbow. “We can just buh-buh-bump.”

Eddie considered it for a second. Then, tentatively, he bumped his sweater clad elbow against Bill’s. Bill broke out in a wide smile.

“Do you wuh-wuh-want to play with us?” he asked, gestures at the other children. Eddie shrunk in on himself, hunching his shoulders and shaking his head no, a tremble coming to his bottom lip.

“That’s okay,” Bill said, like it’s not a big deal to him that Eddie is freaking out. “Do you wuh-wuh-want to go play stick soldiers instead?”

“What about the other kids?” Eddie said. “You were already playing with them.”

Bill shrugged. “I don’t care,” he said. 

Eddie considered. His mommy hadn’t told him he couldn’t play at all, just that he couldn’t play rough. And Bill was being so nice and it seemed like a good idea to have maybe one friend, because he’d never had one before. So he nodded okay. Bill beckoned him, and they went to a quiet place off to the side of the playground. Bill rummaged around for some sticks because Eddie still didn’t want to get his hands dirty. He quickly found several twigs and let Eddie have his pick for his army. They played until they were called back into the school, Eddie relaxing more and more, even making the tiniest little snort of laughter at one of Bill’s jokes. When they go back inside Eddie stuck by Bill's side for the rest of the day even though he didn’t say much. 

From that moment on he thought Bill hung the moon. He kept playing with him at recess, making their own games up away from the other kids. He got to the point that, in contrast to their first day together, he wouldn’t shut up. He wondered if it was a relief to Bill to not have to get the words out, to have someone fill up the silence to stop him from tripping over himself. But as time went by he wondered if it was more than that. Because Bill listened and took him seriously. No matter how worried and hysteric Eddie got, Bill would calmly look him in the eye and tell him he was going to be okay. And Eddie believed everything Bill said so he believed him.

He would have followed Bill anywhere. He did follow him anywhere, when push came to shove. He would never have gone into the Neibolt house on his own. He trusted Bill to the ends of the earth, he knew he’d protect him and would lead him fearlessly. In that moment when they were thirteen, when he and Richie had followed Bill into that terrible place, he knew for the first time he would die for Bill. He had never understood the enormity of dying for another person before. By the end of the summer he knew he would die for all of the Losers but Bill was the first person he could imagine laying down his life for.

Of course Bill knew.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Eddie asks.

“It’s not really the kind of thing you can tell another person. You have to get there on your own. I don’t think you would have believed me anyway. You might have had some sort of crisis even and I didn’t want to bring that on.”

Eddie considers what Bill said. He’s probably right. As a teenager, he’d gotten incredibly defensive when anyone implied he might be gay which, due to his stature and over-excitable nature, was often. Coming from one of his best friends, even worse because it was in earnest, might have caused him to go into a legitimate meltdown.

“Still would’ve appreciated the heads up,” he grumbles, because that’s just how he is. 

“Well, I’m glad you told me, even if I already knew,” Bill tells him. “You’re still my best friend after all this time, you always will be, and I’m happy that I get to see you come into yourself in the way you always deserved.”

The kindness and steadfastness of his friends shouldn’t continue to surprise him and yet Eddie feels his breath catch a little in moments like this. His life had been mostly devoid of true emotional communication up until this point. Adolescents weren’t the greatest at expressing their emotions in a productive way, and with Myra he was never able to find the words to express how he was feeling and he knew she wouldn’t understand him if he did. He was grateful that all the Losers had grown up so they could say these things to each other, instead of dancing around how much they all cared about each other like they’d done when they were children. 

“Thanks, Big Bill,” he says, the nickname slipping out, even though he had at least an inch of height on Bill now. “It means a lot to me that you think that.”

“What made you realize? That you were gay, I mean?” Bill asks. 

Eddie had gone into panic mode when Richie had asked him the same question but with Bill it was easier. Even if he lied, he wouldn’t be lying right to the face of the truth. He knew he could fib, make something up. Derry had certainly unearthed a lot for them all. But like his many hidden secrets this one was begging to come out. He wants to trust someone, to take the feelings for Richie he never let himself have as a child because he thought there would be something wrong if he felt that way and have someone tell him that it’s okay. He needs to hear someone he loves tell him there’s nothing ugly about loving Richie, that it’s not sick or dirty or mean there’s a part of him fucked up beyond belief. If Bill knew he was gay this whole time he wouldn’t stop being friends with him now, even if he puts a name to the object of his desire. This is Bill, who was kind to him when he was four and protected him when he was fourteen and helped save his life when he was forty. He really believes he might never be able to fuck things up with Bill. He could tell Bill.

He looks Bill in the eye, his brown eyes squarely meeting Bill’s blue ones. He feels resigned. “Did you know?” he asks, instead of responding directly to Bill’s question.

“When we were kids? Yeah, Eddie, I just told you-”

“Not that. The other thing.”

Bill continues to look at him, not getting it.

“Did you know how I felt about him,” Eddie says softly.

Bill breathes in deep and lets it out in a soft little huff. “Oh,” he says. 

“So that means yes,” Eddie says. He feels a little embarrassed. How could he have been so blind when his friends saw right through him? God, what if Richie had known? What if he’d been aware this whole time and just didn’t want to say anything because he knew he didn’t feel the same way? 

“I didn’t know,” Bill says. “I suspected. You were just a certain way around him, like you had this extra battery fueling you and you’d let yourself take up more space. Sometimes I could tell you were waiting for-for Richie to say something offensive just so you could get upset at it. But you were never really upset, not most of the time, I could tell because you’d get upset in a different way when he crossed a line. And you let him be so physically affectionate with you, even though that stuff would normally gross you out. I remember once he licked your ice cream, and you yelled at him for being disgusting, but you still kept eating it, like it didn’t really matter he got his dirty tongue germs on there. It could have been just that you were comfortable around him, I didn’t know. But it seemed different because you never did that stuff with me or Stan even though I know you loved us. You just always seemed different around Richie and it’s not like I knew anything about emotions so it could have been anything but you never seemed like you ever liked anyone else in the same way.”

That was true. Eddie hadn’t really dated in high school. He’d made up a crush on a girl named Ella in their history class but that was just to get the others off his back. He took her to one school dance and spent the entire time awkwardly talking about the homework they had for their class together. His friends believed him when he said she let him kiss her when he walked her home, but the truth was he didn’t even try.

“So I just figured, if you liked anyone, you liked Richie.”

“I did,” Eddie admits finally. “I did like Richie, I just had no idea how much I liked him. Or in what way I liked him, I guess.

“Wait-was Richie your gay realization? When we went back to Derry?” Bill looks suddenly delighted.

“Yes,” Eddie mutters. Bill starts to laugh. “What’s so fucking funny about that?” Eddie snaps.

“It’s just-” Bill says, covering his mouth with his hand as he tries to stifle his laughter. “You didn’t know you were gay your whole life and then you see Richie-Richie Tozier-and realize you were gay? Had you never seen a man before? Like a real, attractive man? Because Richie looks like a muppet. Have you seen that photo of Gonzo in the chilli pepper shirt? Richie looks like that but worse. He still hasn’t found glasses that look good on his face or figured out what to do with his hair. He’s balding, you know that? You can see his hairline going. And his overwhelming sexual magnetism made you realize you liked men? Did you not see Ben? Or Mike?”

“Ben definitely helped, okay?” Eddie says, flustered. Which was true. It was like when he saw Richie a gay floodgate had opened up, and he became increasingly aware that he wasn’t staring at Ben’s dimples or broad chest for no reason, he was staring because he was fucking hot. That had been a very stressful evening for Eddie in many ways.

Then he catches up to everything Bill said. “Wait, Mike?” he says, raising his eyebrows at Bill. Bill flushes the tiniest bit in his cheeks. “Mike’s hot,” he says. “There’s something about the whole recluse librarian, intense protector thing. He’s got a whole vibe to him. And did you see the picture he sent us from Florida? He looks . . . good.”

Eddie had seen the picture and had to agree with Bill. Mike had been standing at the end of a dock, holding up a fish he’d just caught. He was grinning, a floppy sun hat on his head. He was also in a tank top that showed off his biceps and shoulders, nice but not imposingly sized muscles lying beneath his skin. Eddie was pretty sure this was the part of the picture Bill was referring to. 

“Jesus, are we all gay? How did we all turn out gay?” Eddie asks. This would be putting them at four out of seven, at least that Eddie knew of. Everyone else knew of only one. Richie had come out formally in their group chat several days earlier. Well, formally might not be the right way to phrase it. He’d texted everyone:

_lol so im gay. like super gay. for real 100% gay. if necessary i will prove to you all how much i like sucking dick or how many dicks ive sucked. but yeah, dick digs dick_

Eddie doesn’t particularly like to think about how many dicks Richie might have sucked, both from the twinges of jealousy he felt over those guys and from the paths his mind went down when he thought about Richie sucking dick. And about how much he might like doing it. 

Bill responded the to message fairly quickly:

**You have never called yourself Dick before, please don’t start for the sake of a cheap joke**

Followed up by:

**Proud of you man**

The other Losers had chimed in with their various comments of support, like Eddie knew they would. Somehow, he couldn’t imagine his friends rejecting Richie like they would reject him. Richie was once again proving himself braver than Eddie, putting himself out there and jumping in the bracing waters of their friend’s reactions while Eddie had to keep sticking in one toe at a time. Eddie wished he could be carelessly brave in the way Richie was, how he’d just barrel ahead and make the best with what he was given. 

“Losers stick together,” Bill says. “There was a reason we were all outcasts in Derry, and there was a reason we all found each other. Besides, I don’t know that I’m gay. I’m just interested. Doesn’t have to mean anything more, especially since the thing I’m most interested in is fixing my marriage with Audra. Besides, we’re not talking about my gay revelation. We’re talking about yours. You saw Richie again, realized you were gay, and then, what, went back to your wife? Eddie, why?”

“Because I thought it wasn’t worth pursuing. That even though I felt this way, I could tamp it down, ignore it like I’ve ignored so many things. It seemed wrong to turn my back on my life. I’d never lived authentically before so why start now? Just because I’d had feelings for Richie didn’t mean I would feel that way about another man again. I could go back to being a good husband and forget all about it.”  


“Clearly that didn’t work.”

“No, it didn’t,” Eddie admits. “I didn’t go back to being a good husband. I don’t think I ever was one in the first place. I was just playing the role, what I thought a good husband was supposed to be like. Remembering her birthday and surprising her with flowers which weren’t really a surprise because she’d talk the whole week before about how nice flowers would be, and watching her favorite shows with her when she was upset, and not making friends with people from work because we didn’t need anyone but each other. But that wasn’t me being a good husband, that was me being the husband she wanted me to be. And when I came back I just got worse and worse at playing that role. I knew that it was fake, that that’s not what you’re supposed to feel when you’re in love with someone. I was never a good husband to her because-because our entire marriage I was in love with someone else, and it wasn’t until I came back from Derry I knew that. That I knew what being in love felt like.”

“How were you in love when you didn’t even-oh. Oh.” He sees it click together in Bill’s head. “All this time?”

“Not like I knew it, but yes. My whole life. I’ve loved Richie Tozier my whole fucking life.” He looks at Bill. “I’ve never said that out loud before. Not even in therapy. It feels good but it also feels scary. Wow. I love Richie.”

“Well, what are you going to do about it?” Bill asks.

Eddie looks at him blankly. “Do? There’s nothing to do. I’m going to live with him, and never tell him, and continue to be a good best friend without making him feel weird. I just got all of you back, I don’t want to fracture things again.”

“Eddie, there’s no way you could fracture things. We’re past the point of abandoning each other or things becoming weird. If you tell him and he feels the same way, great. If not, then nothing will change. He’ll still be your best friend, he’ll still love you, he’ll still let you live with him. Richie couldn’t hate you, just like none of us could ever hate you. Besides, what if he does feel the same way? We know he’s gay too now.”

“You can’t just throw together the only queer people you know. Just because he’s gay doesn’t mean he’s into me. There’s lots of guys for Richie to be interested in. He’s been in Hollywood for the past decade, successful in show business for just as long. I’m sure there are people all over who want to get with him.”

“Again, do you remember what Richie looks like? I’ll admit he’s not really as terrible as I described but LA is crawling with people whose sole job is to be hot. And putting his appearance aside, you’ve been here, what, two months? And how many dates has Richie gone on?”

“He couldn’t have been dating, he wasn’t out to me.”

“Okay, and how many dates has he gone on since he came out?”

Eddie doesn’t have a response.

Bill continues, “Richie is not interested in dating, or really even hanging out with other people. He wants to spend his time with you.”

“Because he feels bad for me! I’m a divorced middle aged man living in a city where I don’t know anyone else, not like I had a bunch of friends in New York.”

“Richie doesn’t have a bunch of friends here,” Bill says. “None of us have a bunch of friends. People we like, maybe, people we see, but not friends. Not best friends, at least. Audra’s the only other person I’ve met who I’ve connected with like I did with you guys, and I’m lucky to have her, but it’s still not the same. He wants to spend time with you because he likes being around you, probably more than he likes being around anyone else in the world. You and Richie have something special.”

“Which is why I can never tell him because I don’t want that special thing to go away. He doesn’t feel the same way,” Eddie insists. “If he did feel the same way he would have said something because Richie is incapable of keeping a secret. Remember when Stan told Richie he had a crush on Betty Cook and Richie told all of us and wouldn’t stop making kissy faces when Betty walked by? And Stan wouldn’t take to him for a month until Richie gave him his best comics?”

“I do remember,” Bill says. “But you seem to be forgetting he kept being gay a secret for thirty years.”

Bill has a fair point. But just because Richie’s capable of keeping a secret doesn’t mean he’s keeping this one. “I’m not telling him,” he says.

Bill blows a huff of air out of his nose. “You’re so damn stubborn,” he says. “Fine. Don’t tell him, it’s your life. But if you’re not going to do something about Richie you should try dating.”

Eddie looks at him incredulously. “Absolutely fucking not,” he says. “Why would I try dating? I have no interest in dating. What, am I going to meet someone new and explain this whole mess?” he says, gesturing at himself. “No thank you. Besides, you just said things didn’t feel the same with other people. Why would I want a connection that I know is going to be lesser?”

“Just because it’s not the same doesn’t mean it’s not good. I love Audra, and I wouldn’t give up my life with her. I’m fighting not to, even though I know so much more about myself than I did when we first got married. She still understands me in this certain way, understands the deep parts of me that the clown couldn’t bury. And I love who she is, I love that she doesn’t take shit and has this endless capacity to care and is so fucking determined sometimes, you just shouldn’t even get in her way. I love that about her and so many more things. And you deserve a love like that.”

 _‘I have a love like that,’_ Eddie thinks. Because he does. He loves Richie’s ability to run with a joke past the point where anyone thinks it’s funny because he still finds it hilarious. He loves how Richie will protect his friends without thinking, putting himself in harm’s way so they’ll be safe. He loves how thoughtful Richie is when he thinks no one is paying attention. He loves how the corners of Richie’s mouth go so far up when he smiles, and how he can really see it when his smile reaches his eyes. He loves how he’ll match Eddie beat for beat, never backing down when Eddie gives as good as he gets and never treating Eddie like he can’t take it. He loves how Richie cares about him, believes in him, even when he doesn’t believe in himself. He loves Richie, and if he’s done it for this long, he imagines he’ll spend the rest of his life doing it.

But all of this would be counterproductive to Bill’s point and, more importantly, deeply sentimental. So he says “I’ll think about it, okay? Give me some time to adjust to being both newly divorced-and I’m not even divorced yet-and newly gay before I try getting out there. I haven’t dated in seven years and I barely dated before and I’ve never dated men so this is all incredibly foreign to me.”

“Completely fair. But don’t sell yourself short on your own happiness.”

“I’m in the midst of giving that a try,” Eddie says. He knows Bill means best, is just trying to help him. He just doesn’t want to explain the yawning cavern it feels like he’s falling into every time he thinks about spending his life with anyone but Richie. He’s done that before and he hated it and now he knows how good it can be he’ll never want anything else so badly. He can’t imagine a day he doesn’t want it. And the fathomability of being single is far preferable than the unfathomability of unintertwining his life from Richie’s. But again, none of this is something he can say to Bill, so he keeps his mouth shut.

Bill tells him more about the new book he’s starting, and Eddie encourages him to write an ending where everyone lives for once. “Don’t you think we deserve it?” he says. “Sure, off some side characters in the middle, but let the rest of them make it to the other side.”

Bill laughs. “Certainly something about my endings will change, even if they’re not totally uplifting. I’m still a horror novelist.”

“You can still make it gruesome, just let them live.”

They settle up and say their goodbyes, parting with a hug and clapping each other’s backs. The promise to see each other more frequently now that Bill’s returned. “Come over for dinner sometime,” Bill suggests. “Audra won’t be back for a week or so, but I’d love for you to meet her when she’s home again.”

“I’d like that too,” Eddie says. 

On the drive home Eddie thinks about what Bill said: either tell Richie or move on. But his grasp on his new life still feels so tenuous, almost delicate, that he doesn’t want to do anything to tip the balance. Maybe when he has more stability he’ll make some kind of choice, but for now he just wants to bask in the sun of his new life like a lizard coming out from a cave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this fic has just been an elaborate excuse to have Eddie come out to all the Losers individually.
> 
> [Here's](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/muppet/images/2/20/Gonzo-RedHotCheckeredPeppers.jpg/revision/latest/top-crop/width/300/height/300?cb=20100420230906) the photo of Gonzo I'm talking about. Someone on twitter did excellent art of Eddie in this outfit, I wish I'd saved the link, but hopefully it finds it's way to you someday. 
> 
> We can all have the faintest bit of Hanborough, as a treat. Next fic I write I wanna explore that relationship more.
> 
> Come talk to me on twitter at [@beepbeepbxtch](https://twitter.com/beepbeepbxtch) and tumblr at [toziertool](https://toziertool.tumblr.com/)!


	7. people fighting over little things and wasting precious time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie and Richie don't see eye to eye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from 'Found a Job'

Eddie can’t remember ever being happier. Even when he was a kid and surrounded by his friends there had always been the stifling presence of his mother and the specter of the clown. And his life post Derry was a fucking train wreck.

He feels strong and good for the first time. When his co-workers ask him how his weekend went he smiles and tells him about the places he and Richie visited instead of muttering and looking away like he’d do in New York when anybody asked him about his personal life. After talking it out in therapy, he'd come to the conclusion he gained nothing in his life by being a terror at the office. He never used to talk about his outside life at work because he had nothing to be proud of, no stories to tell, and besides these people didn’t deserve to know anything about him. But now he’s actually making pleasant use of his free time instead of fretting at home he likes telling people about the things he does. He has a framed photo of the Losers on his desk, taken right after he’d gotten out of the hospital. Ben and Bev are just holding each other and grinning. He and Richie are in the middle of an argument, their faces turned toward each other, mouths open. Eddie is pointing his finger accusatorily. Bill stands between the two of them with a long suffering look on his face. He’d taken over Stan’s role of making pained glances whenever Richie and Eddie got into it. Mike is just standing there, grinning, arm around Bill, ecstatic that they’re all with him and alive.

When someone asks, Eddie tells them that’s his family. 

Richie has started testing his new material out, going to different clubs. Eddie goes to watch; he loves seeing Richie do his own jokes, loves to see him feed off the energy of a crowd by being his authentic self instead of the persona his writers created for him. But he’s still not out yet; his jokes skirting the subject of his gayness without ever actually touching on it. 

Eddie’s sitting at the bar after one of his sets. It’s a little basement comedy club, far below where Richie used to play, but the audience had so enthusiastically engaged with Richie’s energy that it felt like there was an enormous crowd of people laughing. 

Richie’s schmoozing with the club manager, but he soon makes his way over to Eddie. “Good buddy old pal, tell me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Was I funny? Did I make you chortle? Blow your socks off with hilarity?” He calls over to the bartender “Beer for the resident funnyman and his dashing companion!”

“You can’t just say beer, asshole, this isn’t the Simpsons,” Eddie tells him.

“Jesus,” Richie mutters. “Okay then, two Lagunitas, you specific bastard.” The bartender shoots them a glance but pulls down two glasses.

“You were alright,” Eddie tells him. “The joke about trying to wear your entire suitcase through an airport because you dumped a full bottle of whiskey in your bag could be really great with a little work-shopping.”

He doesn’t tell the truth; that he thought Richie’s whole set was funny. He thought he crackled with energy the whole time, like the stage could barely contain him. He’d pick out specific people and make jokes to them that Eddie couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of ahead of time. He’d told stories about the Losers as kids, and their antics sounded funny instead of like anecdotes about the world’s worst childhood in the world’s worst town.

But he knows Richie’s holding back, still not telling the full truth. There’s a side he won’t access, the parts about himself that are still too raw to joke about. He still won’t let himself get too real up there, strip back all the layers to the messy core of his own traumas and insecurities. 

The bartender comes over, depositing their two beers. Richie takes a solid swig from his glass while Eddie sips his more gingerly. It isn’t necessarily his thing, but it fits the atmosphere of a place like this. 

“You know,” he says casually. “If you told jokes about being gay you’d be funnier.”

He feels Richie stiffen next to him. “What, because being gay is so hilarious? You find living in fear of people’s opinion of you and not being able to hit on guys because you don’t know if they’re going to reciprocate or beat you up particularly chuckalicious?”

“No, but I think you’d be living in way less fear if you were out. Like, what are they gonna do to you then? If you don’t have any secrets no one can expose you for shit.”

“Yeah, but then I’ve just saved them the trouble by exposing myself. Guts and out for everyone to see. No thanks.”

“You want to do this comeback right?” Eddie says. “Then come back as yourself. Stop playing a role and make jokes about shit that’s actually true about your life instead of what your writers think will appeal to frat bros and men who hate their wives. You’re funnier than that and you know it.”

Richie looks down at his hands. “That’s my whole demographic, Eds. I alienate them and I’m playing to empty performance halls. I’ll just be a has been gay hack.”

“Fuck those people,” Eddie says with feeling. “People will keep watching what you make because you’re good, and maybe you’ll have a fan base that appreciates you for who you are instead of who you’re pretending to be. Because you don’t need to be anyone else but you.”

Richie’s quiet for a second, staring down in his drink. “You know,” he says. “I’ve got a couple of enema bits I’ve been saving up for years. Might be the right time to whip those out.”

Eddie chokes on his drink. “Maybe ease into that,” he says when he finally gets composure over himself. “People might react better to something a little more mainstream at first.” 

“Oh no Spaghetti, if I’m doing this I’m all in. The entire world has been hearing about my fake straight sexual exploits for years; they deserve to know my infinitely funnier true gay shit.”

“Don’t call me that,” Eddie says. “Just temper your more juvenile instincts, okay? This can still be a big deal.”

“I’ll show you a big deal,” Richie says, winking. Before Eddie can respond Richie’s manager Steve comes up to them. “Good job Rich,” he says, clapping him on the shoulder. “They really reacted to the bit about the parakeets.”

“Yeah, I didn’t know how that was gonna go over, but they seemed to love it,” Richie says.

“Hi Eddie, says Steve, noticing him for the first time. “Enjoy the show?”

“It was good,” Eddie says, not particularly wanting to go over it with Steve. He doesn’t know him very well and although the other man seems perfectly pleasant Eddie is not interested in making friends with him. 

“Next rounds on me, guys,” says Steve. “You deserve it!” He wanders off to go check in with the club manager.

Richie watches him go. “Wonder if he’ll drop me after I come out,” he muses. “Would be pretty hypocritical of him but you never know.” 

“Then you get a new manager. Trust me, there’s a whole niche you’re not tapping into.”

“Here’s to tapping new things,” Richie says, and waves the bartender over to order a round of shots. 

Richie frets about coming out publicly for a full day on end, pacing the house and constantly barraging Eddie for what he thinks the perfect way to announce himself is. Eddie tells him he doesn’t know, will he quit bugging him while he’s trying to file his taxes, which are so much more complicated in the midst of a divorce. Richie pouts and doesn’t really quit asking him questions until Eddie locks himself in his bedroom. He tells Richie that if he waits just one more hour he’ll come out and help him with this. Richie lasts all of ten minutes. 

“Hey Eds!” he calls out.

“For the last time, I’m busy!” Eddie calls back “And don’t-”

“Yeah yeah, I get it ‘don’t call me Eds,’ moving past that. I think I’m gonna tweet about being gay.”

“Absolutely do not do that,” Eddie tells him. “This should be thought out and measured.”

“Twitter is the one true news platform. What the fuck else am I gonna do? A press release?”

“Just not Twitter, okay?” Eddie says. “People get intense on Twitter.”

“Fine, no tweets, no twits, no twats. Got it.”

Richie moves away from the door. Eddie doesn’t want to tell him the truth: that he’s worried about people’s reactions on twitter. From what he’s seen, people can get vitriolic, and he doesn’t want Richie to expose himself to that when this is still fresh.

Eddie works on his taxes for a couple more minutes. Then he gets suspicious. Sighing, he pulls out his phone. He will never, ever tell him this but he has an alert set for Richie. He’d set it up when he was in New York, which he rationalized to himself as a normal way to keep tabs on a childhood friend he didn’t live close to. He didn’t really have an excuse anymore. 

His inclination is unfortunately correct. Richie had tweeted several minutes ago. It read,

_if you dont like gay people but you do like me then buddy do i got some bad fucking news for you_

“You didn’t,” Eddie yells out.

“You could’ve tried to stop me harder,” Richie yells back.

“Oh, I’m sorry I forgot you had the impulse control of a child.”

Richie appears in his doorway, eyes bright and jittery. He runs a hand through his hair. “I did it,” he says to Eddie. “I really fucking did it.”

“Just count yourself lucky that you have a big enough platform to only have to do that once. I’m going to have to come out over and over again for the rest of my life.”

“I’ll tweet about you being gay if you want.”

“Please don’t,” Eddie says.

Richie bounces on his feet a little bit. “Let’s fucking celebrate! I’m the new face of queerness in comedy, shouldn’t we do something to mark that?”

“Just give me a little bit,” Eddie says. “I still need to-”

“It is February, Eds, I think you can let the taxes rest for one night. Please?” he says, pouting at Eddie. “Just a bit of revelry to commemorate the second most important tweet of my life?”

“What’s the first?” Eddie asks.

“‘If we walked on our hands and had to use our feet for everything else then we’d all have foot fetishes.’ Quality, right?”

“You’re so dumb, you know that? Fine. I will celebrate with you. But I’m still going to bed at a reasonable hour.”

Richie lights up. “I’ll find some champagne; we’re popping bubbles in this bitch tonight.”

Richie does in fact rustle up a bottle someone had gifted him several years ago. Whoever did it had taste and money because it’s ridiculously delicious. They cheers-“To being forty and gay and re-birthed in fabulousness”- and drink the first glass easily. 

Richie goes to his phone and cues something up, guitar blasting through the speakers. “Damn, I used to love this song in college. I would commandeer the music selection at parties in college, and I put this on at a shindig once, got everyone going. Just jumping around like idiots. I never get to dance anymore,” he says. “Dancing’s supposed to be cathartic, right? It releases something inside you. Like it’s this primal thing, they’d use it in rituals. It gets you in communication with the beyond, or like expresses yourself in the world. Celebratory dance is actually a pretty sacred thing. I think we should dance.”

“We’re too old to dance around. I’ll pop a joint.”

“You’re never too old to dance. Don’t make me do this alone.”

“I’m not dancing to Weezer,” Eddie insists. 

“I gotta feel an affinity with Rivers Cuomos, he looks like a somehow dorkier version of me. I know you know the words.” He leans over the counter and croons to Eddie. _“‘Woo-o-o, I look just like Buddy Holly, o-oh and you’re Mary Tyler Moore, I don’t care what they say about us anyway, I don’t care about that.’”_

He can’t believe Richie still does this, still has the boundless energy to entice people to dance with him. “I refuse,” says Eddie. “I categorically refuse.”

Richie gets up anyway. He does a weird little shimmy thing with his shoulders, and starts shuffling around. He waves his arms and even does a little skip. “Don’t let me look like an idiot on my own,” he says before descending into a guitar solo.

“You always look like an idiot,” Eddie. “Not my fault I don’t want to join in.”

“There’s no one here but you and me, and I only look like an idiot if you’re not dancing. If we’re both dancing neither of us look like idiots. It’s the crowd effect.”

“No,” Eddie says.

Richie stops dancing and grabs his phone. He scrolls until he finds something and grins a shit eating grin. “Got it,” he says. 

‘Age of Consent’ by New Order filters in. Eddie furrows his brow and scowls. He loves this song and apparently Richie still remembers that. 

“Don’t pretend like you’re not still a sucker for New Wave. Don’t you remember dancing to this at prom?”

Eddie does. They’d all gone as a group, even though at least Bill could’ve pulled a date. Beverly had moved, but they'd snuck Mike in so it was the six of them. Richie had pilfered some of his parents liquor and they’d covertly passed a flask around behind the gym bleachers. When they got a little tipsy they had the courage to go out and dance together. They’d jumped around, a bunch of uncoordinated adolescents, not caring for once if they looked stupid or if people were staring at them. Eddie had felt this weird pull to be dancing with just Richie that he hadn’t understood, but he’d mostly just been so happy to be dancing with his friends he felt like he could fly.

That feeling is returning to him in bits and bursts while he watches Richie dance. For all his insecurities, Richie has never worried about looking ridiculous. Eddie envies that about him. Eddie knows that he can get a little fussy, worried how others will interpret what he’s doing. But there’s no one here and he never got to dance with just Richie to this song and he wants to. So he gets up.

“Just this one,” he warns. “Then I’m done.”

Richie grins. “You always say that and yet you keep coming back for more.”

Eddie doesn’t quite know what to do at first. He tries to move his feet and let his limbs loosen up. The last time he remembers dancing was at his wedding and that had been pretty miserable all around. It had been so much pressure knowing everyone was watching his steps to make sure that his footwork was perfect, to prove that he’d taken the correct dancing lessons with Myra before this to create the photographic moment she always wanted. But there’s no one here watching other than Richie. And if Richie doesn’t care then why should he? So he starts to hop a little bit, waving his arms. Moving around makes his feet feel fast, like he can just keep moving with unbounded energy. Dancing like this feels like the best parts of being seventeen with less of the baggage and the angst.

Richie grabs him and twirls him around, sending him spinning. He hates to admit it but Richie is a better dancer than him. He’s got a grace to his long limbs when he’s dancing that he doesn't necessarily possess the rest of the time. 

They do a clumsy little shuffle at first and Eddie tries not to step on Richie’s toes. Richie just skips out of the way every time. They get into a rhythm eventually, despite their continued random arm movements. 

Eddie does feel something release inside himself dancing. When his feet lift off the ground he can imagine for a moment gravity is having less of an effect on him, like he can just go higher and higher.

The song ends, and Eddie prepares to sit back down. But then ‘Blue Monday’ blasts through the speakers. Richie looks at him hopefully. “One more,” Eddie concedes.

It’s one more, and one more, and one more until it’s far past Eddie’s bed time and they’ve finished the whole bottle of champagne. He feels giddy and not just from the alcohol. He rinses out their empty glasses and puts them in the sink, then staggers off to bed. Richie is waiting for him in the hallway. “My legs are going to be so sore in the morning,” Eddie tells him.

“It’s the price forty year old men pay for a night of fun. Just wait until the hangover,” Richie says.

“Oh fuck, I still have to go to work tomorrow,” Eddie groans.

“Worth it, though?” Richie asks. His voice is a little uncertain and a little hopeful.

“Yeah,” Eddie says, and smiles at him. “Worth it.”

Richie looks tired still, but in a happy way for once. Like he’s exhausted himself from something other than terror, the type of exhaustion that comes from doing something worthwhile with your body. 

“Thank you,” he says to Eddie. “I feel really good, you know? I’m glad I didn’t have to send that out into the world while I was alone because I would have sat by myself and stewed over the comments and gotten the not fun kind of drunk. And I didn’t have to do that because you were here. So thank you for being here.”

“I don’t really have anywhere else to go, so I should really be the one thanking you.” Eddie says. “But I’m glad I was here because that sounds like a shit time. Just don’t look at the responses, okay? Leave it until morning.”

“Sure thing Eds,” Richie says, and claps him on the back. “Sweet dreams.”

He doesn’t have any nightmares that night, and as far as he can tell, neither does Richie.

There had been some predictable backlash to Richie coming out, but the response was overwhelmingly positive. A whole chunk of the people who used to support him said a bunch of hateful shit but in a weird way it was almost a let down. It wasn’t anything more original than the insults and slurs they’d heard their whole lives. There were definitely pockets of people who thought Richie’s old material was past forgiveness and that coming out was a cheap ploy for attention, but those were easy to drown out. He had new people coming out in support of him, who understand how hard it is to be yourself and want to hear what he has to say about it. 

His jokes do become funnier when he can talk about the gay thing openly. He even includes a bit about the closet Pennywise showed them, although he adds an element of metaphor. Eddie isn’t quite ready to joke about it yet but he’s glad he doesn’t flinch whenever Richie does. 

After some time has settled after Richie’s public pronouncement Eddie decides he’s ready to come out to the rest of the Losers. At this point it’s only Mike and Ben who don’t know (unless Bev cracked and told him, which he doesn't think she'd do). But they should all know. They’re in this together.

It’s a Sunday and he and Richie are lounging around the living room together. Eddie made Spanish omelettes for breakfast and they’re in the midst of demolishing them.

“Still fucked you won’t let me put ketchup on it,” Richie complains.

“It’s fucked you want you want to put ketchup on it. Your culinary tastes haven’t progressed since you were twelve. This omelette is immaculate. And you want to ruin it with a bunch of corn syrup laden, dyed red sugar sauce. It’s blasphemous. Do you have any idea how good this omelette is?”

“I ate the whole fucking thing, didn’t I?” Richie responds. “Best omelette I ever had. My compliments to the chef,” he says, making an exaggerated show of licking his fingers.

“You better not come near me with your slimy hands,” Eddie warns. He says it because he knows this will probably incite Richie to do something, the reverse psychology he’s been employing to grab Richie’s attention subconsciously since he was a kid. Now he knows he’s doing it but can’t stop himself, taunting words coming out of his mouth on impulse. 

“What, these hands?” Richie says, waggling his fingers. 

“Don’t you dare,” Eddie tells him. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

Richie sits there for another second, smirk on his face. Then he pounces, trying to shove his fingers in Eddie’s face. “Get off me!” Eddie yells. “I will kill you, you hear me? I will fucking kill you if you-gah!” Richie manages to swipe his cheek. “Get off me!”

He wishes he really thought this was as gross as he was pretending. Like there weren’t different scenarios where he imagined Richie on top of him, Richie’s spit getting all over him. If he got a boner right now he would fucking die. 

They continue to tussle back and forth until Eddie manages to push Richie off. He glowers at him. “You are the worst, you know that? The absolute god awful worst.”

“Don’t lie, you love my hands all over you,” Richie says.

Eddie flushes. Why does Richie have to say this shit? It’s not fucking fair he can pinpoint exactly what Eddie wants and then make a joke unflustered. 

Richie goes into the kitchen to put their plates in the sink. “Seriously, that was really good,” he calls over his shoulder. “I had no idea omelettes could have nationalities before you moved in. What, does every country have its own omelette? What’s in the American omelette?”

“One bite of the omelette is covered in cheese and sausage pieces, and the rest is just plain egg. You have to watch one person eat the good bite while you fight over the rest with fifteen other people.”

“Pretty rich coming from a man who owns at least one Armani suit.”

“Not my fault I can’t change the system from within.”

Richie doesn’t respond, and he hears the sound of a faucet turning on. After being constantly barraged he now knew to rinse the plates before putting them in the dishwasher. 

Eddie sits there for a second, secure, full of good food he’s proud to have made. He’s planning on spending the next several hours on the couch with Richie watching TV. He knows no time will ever feel perfect, but this one feels right.

While Richie’s still in the kitchen he pulls his phone from his pocket. He overthinks for a second what he’s going to say, then he opens up the Losers group chat and just starts typing. Richie returns to the other end of the couch, settling into his spot. He lets Eddie focus on his phone for a second before he starts nudging him with his feet. “Eds. Eddie-kins. Pipsqueak. What do you want to watch?”

“Stop that,” Eddie orders. “Stop the names, stop the weird thing with the feet. And I don’t know, give me a second, okay?”

“So bossy. Fine, if you don’t give any input, I’ll be forced to pick and you won’t like that. If I remember correctly, you didn’t enjoy _The Mighty Boosh_ at all.”

“That’s because it was weird as shit. Why did they keep singing those songs? Why did the gorilla talk? And shut up and stop distracting me.”

“Sir yes sir,” Richie says, and gives a little salute. Eddie catoaogues his reaction to being called sir as something to deal with later and turns back to his phone.

He finally feels happy with what he has and, after reading it over once more, sends it off. Richie’s phone pings after a couple of seconds. He puts down the remote to wrestle it out of his pajama pocket. When he sees the screen, his face lights up. “Spaghetti,” he coos. “Look at you, following in my footsteps. I really threw the first brick here, paving the way for you. It’s a little more boring than I could have hoped, but what should I have expected from a risk analyst?”

“Sorry I didn’t just fire off something inane.”

“There could be more pizzazz though. Like,” Richie says, looking at his screen, “‘Some of you know this already, but I wanted to make sure I told everyone.’”

“Is that supposed to sound like me? That sounds nothing like me,” Eddie says. “I’m not nearly that nasally.”

Richie continues, undeterred. “‘I’m gay, and I’m glad I know that now, and I’m glad I have all of you guys. So thank you.’ What am I supposed to do with that? It’s so goddamn earnest, I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“I’m not a constant ball of rage and insults. You bring out the worst in me,” Eddie tells him.

Both their phones buzz. Ben is the first one to respond.

_Proud of you Eddie!!_

Mike is quick on his heels.

**Did living with Richie turn you gay? Like is it a proximity thing?**

_I don’t think that’s very sensitive,_ Bev chimes in. _In fact, maybe even a little offensive_

Eddie doesn’t think now is a good time to reveal Richie kind of did turn him gay, both most recently and earlier in his development. He knows his orientation is more complicated than his attraction to one person, and he certainly was never headed anywhere near straightness, but he unfortunately has to admit that Richie mostly shaped his sexuality and what he was into. He guesses Richie didn’t so much turn him gay as he did make being gay the only realistic option.

 _if anything living with eddie made me gay,_ Richie responds. _have u seen his thighs? hubba hubba_

From his end of the couch Eddie flushes. He hates that Richie still has this effect on him only via text. 

“Stop talking about my thighs pervert,” he calls out to him. Richie smirks. “Can’t help myself,” he says. “You really could turn a man gay with those legs.”

Eddie decides ignoring him is the only possible option. He turns back to his phone, texting, 

**If anyone turned me gay it was Ben**

Followed by

**Sorry Bev**

_No offence taken. I appreciate someone appreciating the goods_

Richie snorts at that. “When the goods are that fine who can help themselves?” he says. 

Mike texts, 

**I’m really glad you told us**

**Always here for you**

**Thanks guys,** Eddie says. **Glad you Losers are my friends.**

He puts his phone away before he’s tempted to get sappy. Richie is still grinning at him. “Look at you, letting go of heterosexuality. You’re a real certified gay now.”

“I don’t think you get to decide that,” Eddie tells him. “You’re not the board of gayness.”

“Nope, just the lord of gayness. Now, my newly crowned gay prince, what do you want to watch?”

“John Mulaneny, Eddie says.

Richie’s grin drops. “Fuck you,” he says. “I am ten times better than that wispy little elf and you know it. The Salt and Pepper Diner bit? He stole that from me! Remember when we were at the Crystal Diner and I put on ‘Rock Lobster’ five times in a row? I did that first! I told that story at a party and that dirty thief filched it from under my nose!”

“First of all, you couldn't have told that story because you didn’t remember your childhood up until five months ago. Second, I’m not convinced you did that, because the memory is a little hazy. And third, his delivery is way funnier. The one ‘It’s Not Unusual’ thrown in? Genius.”

“I will not watch that fucking hack,” Richie says. “Pick something else.”

They eventually settle on watching _Twin Peaks_. “You know David Lynch is making more?” Richie tells Eddie. “Like he’s doing a whole revival thing.”

“Hope it’s not shit,” Eddie says.

They watch for a couple more hours, getting cozier. Richie gets closer and closer to horizontal until he eventually swings his feet onto the couch, plopping them onto Eddie’s lap. Eddie should protest but he doesn’t have the heart. He wants to soak this in, wants to rest his hand on Richie’s ankle because he can. He’d never before thought of himself as a physically affectionate person; he rarely greeted people with hugs and had never been demonstrative with Myra in public, or in private either frankly. But having Richie’s legs thrown over him makes him feel cherished in the strangest way. Maybe he’d never thought of himself as a physically affectionate person but Richie was and so it was still a language he knew how to communicate in. Richie used touch to tease, to joke around, sometimes to defend himself. But he also used it to show affection when he couldn’t use words, masking his vulnerability in the silent proximity offered by an arm thrown around the shoulder or a hand gently slipped into his own. 

Eddie feels brave, and if he can’t say anything aloud, he might as well say this. So he puts his hand on Richie’s exposed ankle. He sees Richie’s toes twitch a little but otherwise he doesn’t react.

Eddie curls the fingers of his hand. Despite being a little bony, Richie’s ankle feels nice. Warm, and smooth, and Eddie’s hand fits perfectly where Richie’s ankle curves into his foot. It feels a little too much to stroke his thumb along the skin, too intimate, but he wants to.

They finish their episode, Richie pausing before it autoplays to the next one. He swings his feet out of Eddie’s lap and, with a groan, thrusts himself upright. Eddie misses the weight of Richie’s legs thrown over his but all good things must come to an end. He clenches his fist.

Richie heads to the kitchen. “I’m getting a drink,” he calls out to Eddie. “What do you want?” 

“It’s 3 pm,” Eddie says incredulously. “You can’t possibly be thinking of drinking.”

“Eds, it’s Sunday. I easily could have started drinking three hours ago. If it’s a Bloody Mary or a mimosa you can start drinking at like 10 am on a Sunday. This is me holding back.”

“Just because I’m going to let you make me a drink doesn’t mean I approve of this,” Eddie calls out to him.

“Don’t worry, I’ll spit in yours,” Richie calls back.

Is Richie tuned into the channel of _‘things that Eddie should think are gross but not when Richie does them’_ this morning or something?

“Not too strong!” he says.

Richie, although he doesn't know how to cook in the slightest, is an excellent bartender. “It’s how I survived for like three years,” he told Eddie. “I would bartend at comedy clubs and then I’d perform some nights. I’d try out bits on regulars; I got a real good feel for what’s funny to drunks, which is the same thing as what’s funny to idiots, so it was a pretty useful time for me.” Richie, despite having almost no food in the house when Eddie first arrived, has an immaculately stocked liquor cabinet. He told Eddie he liked making things for people when they were over, surprising them. He claimed he rarely touched it when he was by himself. Eddie, who’d seen the several empty bottles of cheap whiskey in the recycling bin when he first moved in, thought that might be more from a sense of laziness than of abstinence. He didn’t say anything because since he’d arrived Richie only drank beer some weeknights and good whiskey on the weekends. Still, Eddie didn’t believe Richie about his prowess as a bartender, until Richie made him something called a Jungle Bird that tasted more tropical and delicious than anything he’d had before in his life. So, loathe as he was to admit it, he trusted him.

Richie comes back with two glasses. “For monsieur,” he says to Eddie, the terrible French Voice coming out, “a Gold Rush.” He hands him the drink with a flourish. He’s holding a tumbler of bourbon in his other hand, which he sets down on the coffee table when he takes a seat. 

“What’s in this?” Eddie asks, taking the drink.

“Dishwater,” Richie says. Eddie glares. “With just a little bit of coffee grounds thrown in.” When Eddie doesn’t drop his glare he says, “It’s just bourbon, lemon, and honey. Like a hot toddy without the tea.”

“Thank you,” Eddie says, taking his first sip. He’d found out he liked whiskey in small doses, as long as it was paired with something sweet. 

He expects Richie to hit play on the next episode, but instead he just fiddles with the remote, eventually putting it aside. He takes a solid swing of his drink and sets it back on the table. Eddie waits. 

“I talked to Bev,” Richie says in a rush. “About the Deadlights.”

“Oh?” Eddie says. He doesn’t want to push. He wants Richie to share as much as he’s comfortable sharing. But he’s still eager to know what Bev said, what insights she has to offer on why the dreams still linger even after they’d defeated their source. 

“Yeah. She said she doesn’t have the dreams anymore. Which means there’s just something wrong with me. You’ve always said there was something broken in my brain and now we have proof.”

“What, she doesn’t dream at all?” Eddie says.

“She said she has regular nightmares, like from all the shit we saw and lived through, but that she doesn’t have Deadlights dreams anymore.”

“Well, how can she be sure? If she’s having bad dreams?” Eddie asks.

“Trust me, it’s different. You know,” Richie says. “Deadlights dreams are fucking visceral and you remember them when you wake up, you remember every part of them.”

“Okay, so it’s different,” Eddie says. “So why doesn’t she have them?”

Richie makes a pinched face and looks away. “She thinks . . . it’s because she resolved the shit she saw in the Deadlights and I haven’t resolved mine.”

Eddie looks at him blankly. “What do you mean?”

“Like, when we were kids, she saw all of us die. And she said she watched all of us die as adults a bunch of different ways, but it was always when we were alone, when we didn’t have each other. When It separated us. And so she’s not worried about that anymore, she’s not haunted anymore by what she saw in the Deadlights because she knows we’re not all going to die. I mean we’re going to die someday but not because a monster clown is manipulating the universe or whatever. So she doesn’t have Deadlights dreams. And she thinks I still have them because i haven’t gotten over what I saw.”

“Glad to know Bev isn’t worried we’re all going to die anymore,” Eddie says.

“Yeah, I guess you’re the one who’d know best, but statistically, we’re all doing fine, right? Like, for a group of forty year olds.”

“Ho do you not know by now that’s not what my job entails? I work with finances, it’s all about advising people on their investment portfolios. Based off my lifelong interest in knowing safety statistics I’d say we’re alright, I’m not particularly worried about any of us. So did talking about the dreams with someone else resolve them?”

“Not really,” Richie says. 

Richie doesn’t say anything else. He won’t meet his eye. 

“How’s it not resolved? Whatever you saw didn’t happen, and it isn’t going to happen.”

Richie still doesn’t say anything.

“Unless you didn’t see us die in the Deadlights. Did you see something else?” Eddie prods.

“I’m not talking about this with you,” says Richie, taking another gulp of his drink. 

“You have to talk about this with me. Or someone. If it’s unresolved that’s the only way to get it out of your system. You can’t sit on shit, we did that for so long and look where we all ended up. Bottling this up won’t make it easier for you or for anyone else.”

“Do not push me on this,” Richie says. He looks tired around the eyes. “I am asking you to back off, for once in both our lives.”

“Why did you tell me if you didn’t want to talk about it? What was even the point of bringing it up?”

“Because you seemed worried, and I wanted to let you know that you don’t need to be worried, I’m doing fine and I’m working on it.”

“In what way are you working on it? What actual steps are you taking? Because I’m betting Bev told you that nothing is going to change until you process your shit.”

“I’m managing totally great on my own, okay? Maybe she told me to just go back to getting blackout drunk before I go to sleep at night. Which honestly only worked half the time and I wake up hungover but you know, partially effective problem solving is better than nothing.”

Eddie wonders if Richie stopped when he arrived because the dreams got better or because he thought Eddie would judge him for his coping mechanisms. Unfortunately, Richie is right about Eddie’s disapproval. Eddie knows he doesn’t really have a place to judge anyone else, coming as he does from a lifelong obsession with turning to pills at the sign of any ailment, but he knows it’s not a productive thing to do.

“Trying to numb it will only make it worse. You know now from Bev that there’s something that might help, that you don’t have to have fucked up dreams and can actually sleep through the night, and you’re not pursuing it because what-you don’t want to be vulnerable? You don’t have to talk about something that scares you? We’re all scared, we saw monster spiders and dead children and our worst nightmares come to life. There’s nothing you could say to me that isn’t worse than what we’ve already seen.”

“Yes there is!” Richie yells. “I’ve seen shit that you haven’t, okay? That you can’t imagine.”

“I got fucking stabbed! I thought I might die in that disgusting sewer after just remembering all of the good parts of myself. You think that wasn’t traumatizing?”

“Yeah, and I had to watch you get stabbed! You were bleeding out right in front of me, and it would have been my fault if you died.” 

“Fuck you dude. You don’t get to make me getting stabbed about yourself.”

“Well, I’m sorry that seeing my best friend get impaled by the monster from my childhood still fucks me up.”

“Then do something about it!”

“Oh, because everyone can deal with their trauma so well as you? Just suddenly get over all your issues, ditch a lifetime of placebo medications, go to fucking therapy, just like that! Fixed! Not all of us can just decide to get better and then suddenly be better!”

“I didn’t decide to get better,” says Eddie, voice rising. “I had to get better! For my friends! For myself! And it’s fucking work, and it’s hard, and it’s not my fault if you’re too lazy to do it.”

Richie’s face goes blank. Eddie wonders if he’s crossed a line, gone too far. Richie’s so rarely sensitive about his flaws, lets insults roll off of him like water, but he knows that it bothers him on the inside, that the cruel things he thinks about himself rattle around in his head even if he’ll never admit it. 

Eddie scoots closer, and lays a hand on Richie’s shoulder. “I just think you should let someone in. That’s all.”

Richie shrugs his hand off. “Leave me alone, Eddie,” he says. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

Eddie feels a weird icy calm settle over himself, starting in his chest and spreading to his fingers. Calling him by his actual name is somehow worse than anything else Richie could have said. 

He lets Richie’s statement hang heavy in the air there for a minute because he has no response. Then Richie downs the rest of his bourbon and stands up. “I’m going out,” he says.

Eddie stands up too. “Look, I’m not going to chase you out of your house,” he says. “I’ll-”

“S’fine,” Richie says, looking past him. “I want air.”

He leaves and Eddie doesn’t try to stop him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After I wrote this I read Chapter 13 of IfItHoller's 'Indelicate' which also has a really beautiful ankle moment. If you see this, I am so sorry and I didn't mean to steal your idea! I think we can all agree that Richie has sexy ankles and Eddie wants to touch them. Also if you haven't read the fic you should check it out!! ('Now What I'm Gonna Say Might Sound Indelicate')
> 
> Come talk to me on twitter at [@beepbeepbxtch](https://twitter.com/beepbeepbxtch) and tumblr at [toziertool](https://toziertool.tumblr.com/)


	8. the feeling returns whenever we close our eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie opens up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from 'Crosseyed and Painless'
> 
> TW: mention of drug addiction
> 
> Heads up, there's a relatively brief description of violence in this chapter. Message me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/beepbeepbxtch) or [tumblr](https://toziertool.tumblr.com/) if you want to know where to skip

Richie’s house is fairly large and Eddie spends the next four hours deep cleaning it. He scrubs down the bathroom and the kitchen, completely reorganizes the refrigerator, and does his laundry. He even tidies up the office Richie never uses, dusting down the wood surfaces and vacuuming the thick rug. He doesn’t touch Richie’s bedroom; that seems like a breach, especially right now.

Richie hasn’t come home by the time he’s finished cleaning. Eddie’s pretty sure he took one of the cars out so he could be anywhere. He worries for a second about Richie driving with alcohol in his system but remembers he only had one glass of whiskey. And, although this doesn’t make reckless endangerment any better, he’s fairly certain Richie’s well practiced in driving tipsy. But still, not knowing where he is makes him worried, if he’s hurt or lost, and when he reaches a zenith of stress he realizes that he’s thinking like his mother and freaks out about that instead. To take his mind off of the whole thing he makes himself a salad and focuses on meticulously chopping the carrots. He eats it alone; he knows it’s objectively good but it doesn’t taste like much in his mouth.

He can’t stop thinking about the fight. He vacillates between being mad at Richie for being so closed off and so stubborn and mad at himself for pushing too hard. He just doesn’t have the right words to get Richie to open up, to make him feel comfortable enough to share what haunts him. And he knows he can’t force the other man to confide in him but he’s never been good at watching Richie destroy himself. 

He thinks about calling Bev but decides against it. In a way, it seems invasive. She has all the answers, she’s the closest person to being able to help Richie, and as much as Eddie wants to rely on her to help unravel him it doesn’t seem fair. He wants to know whatever’s troubling him from Richie himself because what matters isn’t him knowing, it’s Richie telling him.

Eddie has effectively killed six hours and Richie still isn’t home. He doesn’t want to wait up for him; he has nothing to say and it feels like a concession of weakness. So instead he gets himself ready for bed. He takes an extra long shower, like he can scrub off the things that he said and the things that were said to him. It doesn’t make him feel better. 

He opens up the medicine cabinet in his bathroom and contemplates his supply of Ambien. Dealing with his problem of overtaking medication had been one of the few things he’d managed to do in New York post Derry. After his surgery for his injury the doctors prescribed him a potent mix of antibiotics and painkillers. He’d become terrified of developing an addiction to the Vicodin they’d given him, finally able to recognize his earlier patterns of prescription drug abuse. He meticulously listened to his doctors instructions on how to decrease his painkiller dosage, never taking more than recommended. Once home, he couldn’t stop worrying about potential drug interactions with all of the medication he was previously taking, even though the doctors assured him the risk was mild. As he stared at his medicine cabinet he wondered which of these pills bottles he really needed. He knew, even if the meds he was taking now weren’t fake like the placebos his mother had plied him with during his childhood, he still didn’t need them, they’d been forced on him by his own anxiety. 

Going off them felt bad, initially. Whenever he felt a weird sensation in his body his body he could feel himself twitch for a pill bottle. He didn’t want to talk to any of the Losers about it because he was so ashamed that after all this time he was still trapped by what was essentially self medication. He’d kept it from Myra too, but for the opposite reason. He knew she wouldn’t give him the gentle sympathy twinged with pity he’d get from his friends; instead, she would endlessly question his motives. He didn’t want to deal with her pleas for his health, didn’t want to let her convince him he was sick just like his mother did. He was just beginning to believe he wasn’t and he was terrified of backsliding.

Still, he really wanted to sleep, get eight hours where he doesn't have to deal with the churning thoughts in his head. Richie’s words come back to him: “ditch a lifetime of placebo medication.” He grabs the bottle and swallows a pill. Fuck him. There’s no need not to treat a legitimate physical problem that he’s having because he thinks Richie will judge him. Richie doesn’t get to tell him how well he’s doing. He changes into his pajamas, sets his alarm, and crawls into bed. 

He comes to in the middle of the night, shocked awake by the sound of screams. He knows what’s going on almost immediately. Richie’s having a nightmare. Eddie’s heard him since that first night but hasn’t gone to his room again because he doesn’t think Richie wants him there. But he’s so sick of being privy to Richie’s suffering and not doing anything. So he hurries out of his room and down the hallway to Richie’s door. He pushes it open and makes straight to Richie’s bed. Richie’s thrashing around, clutching the bunched sheets in his fist. Eddie hesitates a second and then sits on the edge of the bed. He puts his hands on Richie’s forearms and applies gentle pressure, pushing him back into the bed. “Richie, you need to wake,” he says urgently.

Richie twists his arm out of Eddie’s grasp and sends it flailing, almost smacking Eddie in the face.

Eddie hovers, trying once again to get a grip on Richie’s arms. “C’mon buddy,” he says, looking anxiously down. “You need to wake up.”

And then Richie screams, a yell full ragged with rage and grief, and goes rigid. The panic that has been threatening Eddie since he heard Richie crying out sparks up. He’s so scared and he’s so goddamn helpless. He places his hands on Richie’s shoulders, fingers gripping tight around the tops and leans in close, trying not to shake him but feeling close to it. “Richie, please wake up,” he pleads. “Please just wake up.”

Richie’s eyes fly open. He looks at Eddie with horror and confusion. “Jesus, not again,” he whispers. 

“Richie, you’re awake,” Eddie tells him. “I promise you’re awake.”

His hands are still grasping onto Richie’s shoulders. He doesn’t want to let go and he doesn’t think it would be a particularly good idea right now.

Richie’s expression has gone from horrified to just scared. He’s still breathing hard, his chest rising and falling as he drags air into his mouth. 

“It’s okay now,” Eddie says. 

Richie’s eyes look enormous, shining in the dim light of the room, and they’re filled with a desperate terror. He reaches his hand out and presses his hand down on the center of Eddie’s chest, a little above the bottom of his ribs. His palm is sweaty where it pushes against Eddie’s t-shirt and Eddie should be grossed out by the little pockets of moisture forming on the fabric, but Richie’s hand feels solid and it seems like it’s reassuring him so Eddie doesn’t care. Richie keeps his hand there for a moment, looking at his fingers lightly pushing against Eddie’s chest. Then he bursts into tears. 

Eddie does the first thing he can think of. He scoots to the head of Richie’s bed and comes up behind him, putting his arms around him. He grabs Richie and settles him back into his chest but that only seems to set him off crying harder. Eddie wraps both his arms around him, feeling Richie’s head settle back on his sternum.

Eventually Richie tapers off, emitting a loud snuffle. “There a box of fucking kleenex anywhere around here?” he says, wiping his eyes.

Without disentangling himself, Eddie reaches to the bedside table and grabs the box of tissues sitting there. He pulls a couple out and hands them to Richie. Richie blows his nose loudly.

“These are actually my jerking off tissues, not my crying tissues,” Richie says. “I keep the jerking off tissues closer at hand because they come into use much more often.”

The entire situation is unsexy enough that Eddie has no physical reaction to the thought of Richie jerking off, which he’s grateful for considering the position he’s in. 

“Richie,” is all he says, somewhere between chastising and sighing.

Richie sits up. “I need my glasses,” he mumbles, and swipes them from the bedside table. He puts them on and then just sits at the edge of the bed, hunched over. Eddie stays propped up against the headboard.

“I’m sorry,” Richie says eventually.

“You don’t have to apologize, I’m-”

“Not about waking you up in the middle of the night with my piercing shrieks,” Richie interrupts. “Although I don’t feel particularly great about that one either. I’m sorry for earlier. For being a dick.”

“Oh,” Eddie says. Richie apologizing more often is new. He used to not care if anyone got upset at what he said, only pulling back after driving someone to near tears. But Richie post Derry seems more conscious of when he’s been an asshole, more sensitive to other’s feelings after he’s said something genuinely hurtful. Eddie feels a little ashamed of what he said earlier; maybe Richie is trying, in his own small ways.

“I’m sorry too,” Eddie said. “I shouldn’t judge whatever progress you’re making. I pushed you too hard, and it’s not my business, I just-”

“No, you were right,” Richie says. Eddie snaps his mouth closed. Another rare thing for Richie to say; he hates admitting anyone else was right, especially Eddie. “I need to talk about it otherwise I’m never going to get over it. I need to talk about it with you.”

Eddie feels his pulse shoot up. 

Richie’s still sitting on the edge of the bed. He looks out into the room, not making eye contact with Eddie.

“You got it right, what you said earlier,” he starts. “I did see all of us die in the Deadlights. I saw all of us die in the cistern, in that battle. In the lights it was so confusing, I had no idea if I was awake or dreaming. It would seem like I came out of it, I’d fall down and I’d see us . . . lose. I saw us die over and over again. It just fucking eats Bev, just picks her up and swallows her whole. And Ben is screaming and screaming and It’s just laughing and howling and it just throws him up in the air and skewers him. Bill gets both his arms torn off, Pennywise just keeps taunting him that it should have been him and not Georgie, that it doesn’t even matter because he’s dying down here in the end anyway. And Bill’s yelling at Mike to run, but Mike can’t do anything, he’s just standing there saying ‘I’m sorry,’ over and over again. And then Pennywise bites his head off.”

Eddie feels sick. It’s horrible to hear, and it’s even more horrible to imagine Richie having to experience that, again and again. He’d been frightened of things like that happening in the cistern, all of them dying in gruesome ways. But it had never been actualized, all of his worst fears playing out in front of him indistinguishable from reality. Although the pain of getting swiped by Pennywise had been ferocious it had been all physical. He’d never had visions of all his friends dying looping through his brain.

He notices there’s a conspicuous absence from Richie’s recitation of their deaths. He doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to hear what could have happened to him, how it would have been painful and messy and hurt beyond belief. But he has to. This is what Richie has to do, speak out loud what he can’t let go. And Eddie has to be brave for him. So in as strong of a voice as he can muster he asks “What happens to me?”

Richie clenches his fists. He doesn’t respond for a second, jaw tight. “It impales you,” he says. “Right after you throw the fence post, when you were telling me you thought you killed it for real. I don’t know what's coming or what’s going to happen, I just feel so fucking out of it. And before I can fully come to, Pennywise stabs you through the chest.”

Eddie shudders. He reflexively presses a hand to the same place where Richie had put his earlier. He can feel his own flesh, firm to the touch and not marred by a sucking chest wound. His body is whole, and a little mangled, but definitely alive, pumping blood through him. The prospect of his own death is still terrifying, just thinking how close he came to non-existence. Not just hypothetically, but really, truly dead.

“You die first, it’s what sets the whole thing off. We all just fall into chaos and it picks us off one by one. When you go down it’s like there’s no hope.”

Eddie realizes that, like so many things, he’s been repressing his fears about his own death. He was able to ignore it because he lived through it, he put it behind him. When he was in the hospital he didn’t think about it because he was so caught up in the details of his healing process, and he didn’t think about it afterwards because he was too busy trying to shove himself back into his old life. But if he had been an inch over he would have been gone forever. 

“That’s how you knew to push me,” Eddie says, realization dawning on him. “You knew it was going for me.”

“Yeah, I knew,” Richie says. “I saw it happen.” He laughs a little and it’s bitter. “Wanna hear something fucked? That makes it all worth it.”

“What do you mean?” Eddie asks. 

“I mean all this shit, getting trapped in the Deadlights, seeing us die, having awful fucking dreams. It’s all worth it because I knew to push you out of the way. I’d have nightmares every night for the rest of my life if it meant that you lived.” 

Eddie doesn’t know what to say. He barely had time to process the sacrifice Richie would be willing to make for him. He’s still stuck on how close he was to dying, even though he had always objectively known Pennywise’s leg could have injured him fatally. But now it feels like he was meant to die and escaped it. 

“I thought it didn’t do it right,” Richie continues. “I came out of the Deadlights and I was still so groggy. And it was the weirdest moment, it was such intense déjà vu because I’d literally been living this exact situation over and over again but those times I was frozen. And this time I could move but my body didn’t want to because I’d just been dropped ten feet. And then you were over me and you were talking and I knew this was real, that if I didn’t do anything you were going to die and it was going to be forever. And it was like I got this adrenaline rush, like when mothers push cars off their kids. So I shoved you out of the way and it still wasn’t enough. I fucked up because it still got you, you were still injured and I had no idea how bad it was. You were just bleeding so much, and it was all my fault because even though I knew it was coming I wasn’t fast enough. I thought you were still going to die and I didn’t know how I was going to live after that.”

Eddie’s destabilization of his view on his own mortality finally settles. This isn’t really any different than when he’d been hurt in the sewers. He’d come to peace with the possibility of dying and learning there’s some kind of alternate universe where that actually happens doesn’t change that he’s alive right now. It’s still terrifying to think about bleeding out and dying gruesomely in the sewers. But in this moment that falls away because all he wants to do is comfort Richie, who’s been carrying around this fear and this pain for so long. 

“I didn’t die,” Eddie says, scooting up and laying a hand on Richie’s knee. “You did it, you saved me, and now I’m here.” 

Richie doesn’t react for a moment and Eddie wonders if he’s going to pull away. But instead Richie reaches out his hand and places it over Eddie’s. 

“I’m sorry you still dream about that,” Eddie says. He feels a little bad about pushing Richie so hard to talk about it. 

Richie takes another ragged breath. “That’s not what I dream about,” he says. 

Eddie looks at him with confusion. “What?” is all he can think to say.

“I don’t dream about all of us dying,” Richie continues. “I just dream about you dying.”

Eddie feels like he’s had the wind knocked out of him. 

“What?” he says again stupidly.

“Don’t make me repeat it,” Richie tells him. He’s looking straight ahead.

“Okay,” Eddie responds. He sits there, hand still on Richie’s knee. “Just me?”

Richie’s fingers clench against the outside of his. “Yeah. Just you. It’s different than being in the Deadlights. Like, the dreams start out differently. Sometimes we’re kids, sometimes we’re adults, but every time something goes wrong and you . . . you die. A lot of the time it’s at the house on Neibolt, when you broke your arm and Pennywise was coming towards us and I kept telling you to look at me, only this time there’s no Bev with a fence post and I can’t get you to look at me and I can’t stop it. But sometimes we’re just out riding our bikes, and someone runs a red light and hits you. Or your mom gives you the wrong combination of pills and you just don’t wake up. The adult ones are weirder because my brain has less to work with; once I saw you get crushed by an air conditioner.”

With his new found sense of serenity Eddie’s not upset by the listing of potential ways he could die. He’s been thinking about this almost every day for his whole life, and in an odd way these fears feel like old friends. What’s freaking him out is that Richie’s thinking about this. Richie, who once came so close to hopping off the edge of his roof because he thought it would be funny that Eddie had to physically drag him back. Richie, who once put a penny in the microwave to see what would happen. Richie thinks nothing of the risk involved when it comes to himself. But even if he was too self-destructive to be on the lookout for these things in his own life he's somehow tormented by what might happen to Eddie.

“It’s pretty much the same thing every time after that,” Richie goes on. “After I see you die I dream that I come out of the Deadlights, so it’s like this whole inception thing. And it’s all reassuring you know, like ‘oh that was just a terrible dream, Eddie’s fine, see he’s coming towards me right now,’ and I don’t fucking remember what comes next. Until it’s too late and Pennywise’s claw is sticking out of your chest.”

Eddie moves forward until he’s sitting on the edge of the bed next to Richie. He keeps his grip on Richie’s knee tight, and Richie doesn’t shift his hand. He’s still looking straight ahead, not even turning his head to glance at Eddie.

“It’s different from what I saw in the Deadlights,” Richie says. “It’s way closer to what actually happened. Like, the others don’t die. You still tell us the thing about the leper, we still crush it’s heart. Only this time when we come back to help you you’re gone, we left you alone for five minutes and you fucking died and I wasn’t there. And it all comes back to me, that I saw you die and I knew how to stop it and I didn’t. So I kinda lose it, I won’t believe that you’re dead, I think we can still get you out, I can still save you. The others keep telling me we have to go because the cavern is collapsing but I can’t let you go because it’s all my fault and none of them understand if we just get you out of there we can help you. Haystack and Mikey need to use their massive upper body strength to drag me out because I just won’t fucking leave.” 

Eddie wants Richie to look at him, to get a glimpse of Richie’s eyes and see what he’s feeling, what it’s costing him to say this out loud. Richie’s face has always been so expressive, screwing up with laughter at a particularly good joke or puckering up entirely in displeasure when someone didn’t appreciate his antics. But now he’s just neutral, almost subdued. His facial muscles don’t twitch.

“That’s usually when I wake up,” he says. “Sometimes I make it all the way out of the house. Sometimes we make it to the quarry to get clean there, since we don’t have to drag your ass to the hospital. Sometimes I make it all the way to-” he clamps his mouth shut. “Sometimes I make it to the very edges of Derry but as soon as I drive away I wake up. That’s what I dream about.” 

Eddie knows something about the terror Richie is experiencing. He still dreams about what happened in Neibolt, the leper. Sometimes Richie shows up in his own nightmares, but it’s nothing really so specific. He doesn’t relive his or Richie’s death over and over again. Words seem insufficient. So he drapes both his arms around Richie’s chest and places his chin on his shoulder.

“I’m not dead,” he offers. “You saved me, you did that for real, and there’s not changing that now.”

“Sometimes when I wake up I think you’re gone,” Richie whispers. “Like I’m coming back to my life after you die, there’s no more you. And then I remember you’re still out there and you didn’t die but I can’t always convince myself. It got better after you moved in because I always rationalized I could just go down the hall and check on you, although I never did because that would have been fucking creepy. Sometimes I just don’t know if I’m inhabiting an Eddie-less world and it scares the shit out of me.”

“I’m here,” Eddie says. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m impossible to get rid of at this point.”

“Yeah, honestly, you’re like a goddamn burr,” Richie says.

“And yeah, I’ll die someday, we’ll all day someday, but it’s not going to be for a long time, and it’s going to be peaceful, and I’m not going to be alone. So don’t worry about that for another forty years. Maybe fifty; I keep in pretty good shape.”

Richie snorts a little bit. “Watch you be one of those guys who lives to a hundred.”

“Mostly importantly, I’m not going to die in fucking Derry. So the next time you have a nightmare just remember Eddie Kaspbarak refuses to die in that shitty little town so this can’t possibly be real.”

“Thanks Eds,” Richie says. “Don’t know if I can get my sleeping subconscious to bring that one up, but I’ll do my best.” He shrugs him off his hand and goes to set his glasses on the bedside table. “I should let you get to sleep,” he says. “I know it’s back to work for you tomorrow.”

“Do you want me to stay?” Eddie blurts out. 

He can’t believe he said that. He wishes he could say he didn’t know where that came from, but unfortunately, he does. Even beyond his constant craving to be physically close to Richie he wants to help him. He wants him to sleep through the night and not wake up gripped by fear.

Richie, face looking exposed and even a little childlike without his glasses, gapes at him. “Seriously?” he says incredulously. 

Eddies face heats. “Forget it,” he says, looking away, “I just thought it might help but it’s stupid, I’ll just go back to-”

“Stay,” Richie interrupts. When Eddie just looks at him he continues “I think it would help if you stayed.”

“Okay,” Eddie responds. His heart is beating so fast he can feel it in his ears.

Richie turns out the bedside lamp and Eddie scoots over in the bed. He feels a little weird getting under the sheets but it’s not like he can sleep on top of the covers.

Richie slips into bed next to him in the now darkened room. He lies on his back, staring straight up at the ceiling. Eddie lies on his side, facing Richie. He very deliberately keeps his eyes firmly closed so he’s not staring at him.

“Hey Eds?” Richie says into the blackness.

“Yeah?” Eddie responds, heart rate quickening.

“Remember when we were kids and we’d have sleepovers with all the Losers and I’d try and see how many of you I could dutch oven at once?”

“Yes, I do remember your constant need to prove yourself to be the grossest boy in the world.”

“Wouldn’t it be funny if-”

“No,” Eddie says firmly. “Do not dream of it. Actually, do dream about it, just don’t do it.”

“That would be a pretty fun dream. Definitely an upgrade from the usual.”

Eddie doesn’t respond. He doesn’t have the capacity to joke about what Richie sees at night. And despite his proximity to Richie he still feels himself getting pulled under. It’s 4 am, he’s emotionally exhausted, and he wants to drift off to a hopefully nightmare-less sleep. 

He feels Richie settle into a different position. When he cracks a peak, he sees Richie is now facing away from him. He stares at the back of the other man’s head, mentally tracing the whorls of his hair.

“Night, Eds,” he hears Richie mumble.

“Night Rich,” he responds. “Sweet dreams.”

He hears Richie snort. Then he closes his eyes off and drifts gently off. 

\----

When he wakes up the light is all wrong, the bedding is a different thickness than it should be, and he’s wrapped around another human being. 

It comes back to him very quickly. Richie’s nightmare. His intrusion into the other man’s room. Richie’s confession. His decision to stay in bed, sleeping with him through the night.

What he did not decide to do was cling onto Richie like a baby koala, which he knows Richie would make a joke about if he was awake. One arm is underneath Richie’s neck, cushioning his head, while the other is thrown around his middle. Both of Richie’s hands are clinging on to Eddie’s forearms, fingers circling them loosely. Their legs are intertwined underneath the sheet. Eddie would barely have to move forward to bury his nose in the nape of Richie’s neck.

Richie’s snoring faintly, which doesn’t really surprise Eddie. He remembers him snoring when they were kids, and even though it’s a little deeper now it’s the same gentle wheezing snuffles that Eddie recollects. 

Eddie tightens his grip and feels Richie shift against him. As selfish as it is, he wants this. He wants to feel Richie’s back against his chest and be able to count his breaths. He wants to settle his body against his without feeling like he needs to hover, keeping a safe amount of space between them. For twenty odd years he didn’t think he liked sleeping in the same bed as another person but it turns out he just didn’t have the right partner. He likes sleeping with Richie. He always has.

They’d done this before when they were kids, young enough when it didn’t mean anything more than a touchy friendship. At Losers' sleepovers Eddie and Richie would always find each other and put their pillows and blankets down next to each other. Sometimes they’d wake up firmly ensconced in their own spaces, curled up or sprawled out individually. But sometimes Eddie would wake up with his head on Richie’s chest, feeling it rise and fall as they both breathed into the darkness of Stan’s basement. When Richie eventually woke up he’d crack a dumb joke about his irresistible magnetism or how Eddie’s head only came up to his collarbone and Eddie would punch him or roll off and he wouldn’t know why he missed the lack of contact. 

It was different in the nights Richie snuck into Eddie’s window to spend the night. They would jostle and push against each other because Eddie’s bed was realistically too small to fit both of them. So Eddie would push right up against the wall and Richie would squeeze in on his side so he didn’t fall off the edge of the bed. Their legs would tangle a little bit, which wasn’t actually very pleasant because Richie kicked in his sleep as a kid, but Eddie never pushed him over the edge of the bed, even though he sometimes felt tempted.

When they were fourteen Richie had offered to start taking the floor. He’d been a little awkward, looking down, trying not to fiddle with his hands. “You know, I can camp out on the carpet,” he’d said. “Don’t need to force two growing boys into a bed meant for one toddler sized one.”

“Don’t be stupid, you’ll fuck up your back,” Eddie snapped back. He didn’t know why he got this weird feeling across his sternum when he thought about Richie sleeping on the ground below, his warmth absent from Eddie’s side. The most physical affection Eddie got was from his mother, her suffocating hugs and her gripping his cheeks. It felt nice to be close to someone because he wanted to, someone who didn’t expect anything in return.

Richie didn’t respond. The tight feeling across his chest spread. Maybe Richie didn’t want to share that space with him any more. 

“Unless you’d rather, I can put down some blankets and stuff, I don’t want you to feel like I’m forcing you into bed if you’d be comfier on the ground,” Eddie rambled. Just because he wanted to selfishly take advantage of the nights he didn’t have to sleep alone didn’t mean he could ask Richie to do something he didn’t want to do.

“No, it’s not that,” Richie says quickly. “I just like . . . don’t want it to be . . . you know, weird,” he finishes, still looking down.

Oh. Eddie had never really considered if it was strange for two teenage boys to share a bed. It was just something he and Richie had always done, between sleepovers and the hammock. It had never been weird before, but they were in high school now, and sleepovers had different implications. 

“Oh. Okay,” he said a little awkwardly. “Yeah, let me just set something up.”

Eddie cushioned the floor by his bed, putting down his extra blanket and some pillows. Richie didn’t say anything, just hovered. When Eddie was done Richie gave him a little salute and said in a barking sergeant's Voice “Bedroll passes muster, good work Cadet Kaspbrak.”

Eddie just rolled his eyes. He moved around the spot he set up for Richie and climbed into his own bed. “Can you turn off that light by the bedside table?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah,” Richie responded. “Sure.”

He switched off the lamp and settled back into his bed. There was more space without Richie but it felt weird to know he was here in the room with him but not really with him. It felt lonely. But he certainly didn’t want to voice that, because if it hadn’t been weird before it would certainly be weird then. He heard Richie shift around a little bit. 

“Night, Richie,” he said from the bed.

“Night, Eddie,” Richie responded.

It took Eddie a little bit to drift off but eventually he fell asleep. However, he was awoken in the middle of the night by an elbow jabbing into his side. “Ow,” he yelped. “The fuck?”

“Scoot over,” he heard from the darkness of his bedroom. He faintly saw the outline of Richie, one knee on the side of his bed. 

“What?” he said groggily.

“I can’t sleep, so scoot over,” Richie responded.

Eddie, not really thinking about it in his half awake state, obligingly moved closer to the wall. Richie hopped in and pulled the covers over himself. “Was cold on the floor,” he muttered. “I think warm air rises and shit.”

“How come you’re only smart at night?” Eddie said sleepily.

“I’m smart all the time Eds, you just don’t notice.”

“Course I notice,” Eddie said, drifting back off. “Now shut up.”

They lay there, lightly intruding into each other’s space, until they both fell asleep. Richie never mentioned taking the floor again.

This is different, two grown men in the same bed. There’s more than enough room in Richie’s bed to accommodate two people but yet they still wound up right on top of each other again. He’s still drawn to the warmth of Richie’s body.

Eddie left his phone in his bedroom, but he’s almost certain his alarm will be going off soon. He doesn’t want to extricate himself from Richie, but he still unfortunately has to go to work and support himself. So he tries to gently slip his limbs from around the other man. However, Richie just tightens his grip on his arm.

“‘S bullshit,” Richie mutters.

“What’s bullshit?” Eddie responds.

“Leaving. You leaving. ‘S bullshit.”

“I have to go to work, Richie,” Eddie tells him.

“Bullshit,” Richie says one more time, and settles back to sleep. 

Eddie successfully un-entangles himself from Richie, although the other man is a dead weight. He gets out of the other side of the bed, leaving Richie sleeping. He pads out of the room as quietly as he can, turning the handle of the door on the way out so the lock doesn’t click.

He makes it back to his room five minutes before his alarm goes off. It’s six thirty am, leaving him plenty of time to get work. 

After he gets himself clean and dressed he goes down to the hallway to make breakfast, trying to make even less noise than usual. When he gets to the kitchen he contemplates the coffee grinder. Usually he doesn’t mind if it’s loud and wakes Richie up because he’s an advocate of the other man getting up earlier. But he wants to let Richie sleep, and sleep well.

He fills up the grinder with beans and goes out to Richie’s deck. He roots around a little bit but eventually finds an outlet on the side of Richie’s house. He grinds his coffee out there, crouched over the machine until it’s finished rattling around the beans. He knows he looks stupid and he knows this is stupid but it feels like the least he can do.

While he’s eating his English muffin he thinks about Richie, thinks about him waking up alone. He wishes he could have stayed in bed and blown off work but this objectively isn’t a good enough reason to take a sick day when he hasn’t really been at this office all that long. His conscience still pains him though.

He puts the french press half full on the counter, settling down a bowl of sugar next to it. He wants to leave Richie a note so it doesn’t feel like he’s just slipping out. He scrounges around for a piece of paper and a pen. He writes neatly ‘Left you some coffee. Text me if you need anything.’

He considers it. It’s a little terse. So even though he’s not a great artist, he sketches something out beneath his words. It’s mostly stick figures but maybe Richie will get a kick out of it.

It’s 11 am when Richie texts him. Eddie is poring over a spreadsheet, double checking the numbers against the client report. It’s detail oriented and structured, and Eddie finds joy in being meticulous about it. He’s tired, but it’s the kind of tired that can be treated by a couple of cups of coffee and a gentle transition into the world. Now that Eddie is making an effort to get to know his coworkers he finds it pleasant to stop into the kitchen to refill his thermos and chat with Sara about her two year old, or hear about Donnie’s weekend trip to Santa Monica. It’s easier to be in a good mood when he doesn’t have to worry about keeping everyone in constant fear of him. And he hasn’t noticed a decrease in their quality of work, just an uptick in the quality of his interactions with them. He finds the time goes by more easily as well, when he can break up his day with little conversations.

He’s set his phone on his desk, which isn’t unusual, but he keeps glancing at the upturned face every couple of minutes, wondering if he’s going to hear from Richie. When his phone eventually buzzes he fumbles for it, almost dropping it. 

Richie’s sent him a picture of his note. He can see Richie’s favorite mug in the background, the one that says ‘I licked it so it’s mine.’ In the forefront of the photo is his doodle. It’s of a blocky figure with over-sized glasses and unruly hair who’s in the midst of kicking a Pomeranian so hard it flies into the air. In the background another figure with a pointed stick is cheering him on. It’s all very crude and Eddie is a little embarrassed looking at it but at least he thinks it’s clear. 

_every time i see one of these motherfuckers on their ugly leashes i want to yeet them into the sun_

_how are u able to read my deepest desires so easily_

Eddie smiles and texts back.

**You’re pretty transparent.**

Richie responds quickly:

_ive got layers on layers eds_

They text back and forth the rest of the day, photos and little anecdotes. Richie sends him some memes, which Eddie is still vaguely confused by. 

The day passes quickly, and before Eddie knows it he’s headed home. When he gets back to the house he throws his briefcase on the couch and loosens his tie. He’s surprised to hear vague clattering coming from the kitchen. He follows the sound until he finds Richie unloading grocery bags. When he sees him, Richie’s face lights up. “The bitty businessman himself!” he says. “Long day of pie charts and bar charts and star charts? Basing results off astrology seems just as valid as whatever house of cards the stock market usually operates on. Reading the sky is an up and coming field of science.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s all bullshit. I don’t even think I know what sign I am,” Eddie says. “Do you?”

“Yeah, you’re a Scorpio,” Richie tells him. “Stubborn, with a dangerous rear stinger.”

“I meant do you know what you are,” Eddie asks, exasperated.

“I’m a Pisces. Which makes sense with all the crying.” At Eddie’s confused look he explains, “Emotional, weepy water sign. You’re one too but that must have skipped you.”

“How do you know so much about this?” Eddie asks, taking a seat at the kitchen counter. He thinks about asking Richie if he wants help with the groceries but it seems like the other man has a rhythm going and he wouldn’t want to intrude on that boundless energy.

“Dated a girl in college who was really into it,” Richie explains. He stops moving for a second and shakes his head. “Can’t believe I dated women for so long. Compulsory heterosexuality is a bitch.”

“At least you never deluded yourself into straightness so hard that you married a woman. That's way more difficult to extract yourself from that than a relationship.”

“Yeah, how’s that going?” Richie asks.

Eddie shrugs. “Fine,” he replies. “Slow.” Myra had backed off in the past several weeks, making Eddie nervous for whatever she had planned for New York. He doesn’t want to particularly go into this with Richie, or to remind either of them he’s going back to New York in two weeks. So he changes the topic. “What are you doing?” he asks, gesturing at the food spilling over the counter.

“Stocking my kitchen like a goddamn adult. I don’t need your instructions to tell me what food to put into my body.”

Usually Eddie texted Richie at the beginning of the week with a list of ingredients, both for his own lunches and for their dinners. Sometimes he and Richie went together to the grocery store, but most of the time Richie offered to go while Eddie was at work because it was less crowded. Eddie feels like no one else sees how thoughtful Richie could be, the little things he did to make his friends’ lives’ better. He wonders if Richie knows how much it’s appreciated. 

“Thanks for doing that,” he says. Richie snorts. “It’s my house, you’re hardly responsible for feeding me. I owe you for keeping my sorry carcass reasonably nourished. So I thought I’d cook dinner.”

Eddie is surprised. In the several months he’s been living here Richie hasn’t really cooked. Pasta sometimes, maybe a stir fry if he was feeling particularly ambitious, but never a full meal. “I thought you didn’t know how to cook,” he says, and winces. That’s not exactly encouraging. 

“I don’t,” Richie responds. “I was wondering if you could maybe . . . help me? I’ll do all the dangerous knife work, you just have to swoop in at the end and sprinkle the magic combination of spices. But don’t worry if you don’t feel like it, you cook all the time and I can flounder around on my own too, don’t need to drag you into the disaster zone.” He’s clutching a loaf of whole wheat bread tightly in one hand. 

Eddie’s never cooked with anyone before. He always just cooked for himself before he got married, and after that he and Myra took turns. He worried he’d be overbearing, micromanaging, that Richie would get annoyed with him. But Richie wants his help. So he says “What are we making?”

Richie beams. “I looked up recipes earlier,” he says, pulling food from the brown bags on the counter. “I thought salmon and brussels sprouts? I went to the fish market so I know it’s fresh, talked to the fisherman himself and got his and the fish’s whole fucking life story. The brussels sprouts are just from Whole Foods. And we have olive oil, right? Of course, we have a shit ton of olive oil, gotta keep you company so you’re not the only extra virgin in the house, up top!” Richie says, raising his hand for a high five.

“Fuck off,” Eddie says automatically, ignoring the hand. “Yeah, that sounds good. Did you have a plan to season the salmon?” he says suspiciously. 

“I have the edges of a plan but I need your help for ratios and shit and what tastes good, you’ll know I’d just slap a whole bunch of salt on there and call it a day. But I promise I at least have all the right spices and shit.”

“Let’s get to work,” Eddie says, getting up. “You can start by cutting up the brussels sprouts, as long as you promise not to chop off a finger and bleed on everything.”

“Blood gives flavor, Eds. All that iron.”

“Disgusting. You’re disgusting.”

They move around the kitchen in a little dance. Richie produces a bottle of wine which he swears the recipe calls for, even though none of it goes into the food. The air smells like garlic and there’s sprouts sizzling away in the pan, browning at the edges. Eddie feels warm, content. He shows Richie how to season the salmon, how much oil to add to the sprouts so they don’t drown. Richie doesn’t know to stand back after hot oil has been added to a pan, and he yelps when it sizzles upwards. Eddie tells him that’s what he gets. Even though Richie claims he knows this already Eddie shows him the right ratio of water to add to rice, and when to take it off heat so it doesn’t get mushy.

Soon, they’re done with all of the cooking. Eddie makes up their plates in the kitchen while Richie scrambles around to set the table. He has at least pairs of matching plates and cutlery, if not whole sets, which he lays down with a flourish. Soon they’re sitting down to eat.

They talk a little about both of their afternoons, and Eddie is surprised by how much they both have to say considering they’ve been in contact most of the day. But Richie does a particularly funny impression of an elderly woman at the grocery store inspecting onions, and he knows just a text wouldn’t be able to make him laugh as hard as Richie’s quavery old lady voice. 

Eventually, Eddie summons up the courage to ask what he’s been wondering all day. “Any more nightmares last night?” he says cautiously. 

“No, but I don’t usually have two in the same night anyway. I don’t think I would have been able to get back to sleep if you weren’t there though. At least not until it was light outside. So it’s good that you stayed.” 

“I’m glad it helped,” Eddie says. He expects Richie to give him shit for the fact he basically used Richie as a personal space heater but he doesn’t mention anything.

“Easier to know you’re not dead when you’re right there, you know?” Richie says quietly.

It’s painful to think about Richie lying in bed at night, convinced Eddie is dead and believing that it’s his fault. “I could try staying again,” Eddie says, feeling his pulse quickening. “To see if it’s just a fluke.” He doesn’t want Richie to sleep surrounded by the thought that Eddie might be gone, waking up unable to convince himself that what he dreamed isn’t reality. Maybe this isn’t Richie asking for help but for the first time since Eddie learned about Richie’s nightmares he knows what he could do to make it better, to ease some of what torments him. 

He feels Richie tense up beside him. “You don’t have to do that,” he says quietly.

Eddie feels a little cowed but he presses ahead. “I have to sleep somewhere, don’t I?” he says. “Maybe you didn’t have bad dreams because I was there, or maybe you just didn’t have them. But you can’t draw any conclusions from a sample size of one. In order to get results, you have to repeat the procedure. We’d be terrible scientists otherwise.”

“Are you gonna poke and prod at me, Eds? Run simulations on your specimen?” He holds out a fake clipboard and pushes his glasses down his nose, staring down. “After repeated exposure, Tozier will now only respond to ‘Fuckface.’ Further insulting required to see if we can sublimate his entire identity to being a fuck of a face.”

“Fine, drench yourself in sweat and wake the whole neighborhood screaming, I don’t care,” Eddie snaps, embarrassed. He feels like the parts of himself that are offering this to Richie for selfish reasons are cowering in shame. Richie should make a joke out of this because it’s stupid, it’s all stupid.

“No, let’s do it,” Richie says. “It can’t hurt, right? You keep bugging me to take concrete steps, and this’ll get you off my back for a while. Only figuratively, because you were clinging on pretty tightly last night. I don’t remember you being quite so cuddly, but man, you are like an octopus.”

And there it is. Eddie flushes. “Shut up,” he mutters. “I won’t hesitate to make a pillow blockade.”

“Which’ll just lead to a pillow fight, analyze the risks a little better, Spagheds.”

“You know what, you can do all the dishes,” Eddie says, getting up from the table. “Payback, for the decades of unwanted nicknames.”

Despite his strong statement they end up doing the dishes together, standing side by side over Richie’s sink. Richie rinses and Eddie puts the plates and bowls in the dishwasher because he knows how to maximize the space to it’s best potential, instead of just tossing it in there like Richie does. Richie sprays him a little with the water hose while he’s rinsing up, and when Eddie tries to wrestle it out of his hands they both get drenched.

It’s still a little too early for bed, so they camp on the couch for an episode of TV. “No more _Twin Peaks_ ,” Richie says. “Don’t think that helped with the nightmares.” 

They settle on _The Office_ ; they’ve been working through it ever since Eddie moved in. Richie gets a kick out of how uncomfortable the cringier moments make Eddie.

“I can’t watch,” he said between his fingers while Michael Scott interrupts a musical performance with popping balloons and a rolling wine bottle.

“After the fucking leper, this gets you? Your greatest fear is awkward social situations?”

“It’s awful. It’s like a car wreck. Just tell me when it’s over.”

When the episode wraps up Eddie gets up a little hurriedly. He’s keyed up and almost doesn’t want to broach the topic of sleeping arrangements but it’s important for the maintenance of his life that he keeps to his routines. “This is usually when I go to sleep. And I know it’s early for you so you know if you wanna stay up I can just go to bed, don’t need to drag you down with me.”

“No, it’s good for me. I gotta start healthy person habits sometime right? Now, take me to bed,” Richie says, winking. “Carry me away in your big strong arms.”

“I might smother you,” Eddie warns. 

He goes into his own room to get dressed for bed. He feels a little strange looking at the bed he made this morning knowing he’s not going to get into it. Looking at himself in the mirror while he’s brushing his teeth he bounces on his toes a little bit. ‘This isn’t weird,’ he thinks to himself. ‘This is a comfort thing and I’d do it for any one of the Losers.’ Which is true. If Bev or Mike was having nightmares he wouldn’t hesitate to share a bed with him. But he has to acknowledge to himself that it’s Richie and it’s different, and he would want to share a bed with him even if Richie wasn’t having troubles at night. Is he being creepy? Is he being selfish? God, his motivation is all coming from the wrong place, he’s just imposing his will on Richie’s and Richie doesn’t actually want this, he’s just acquiescing because he doesn’t want Eddie to feel useless. It was one thing when it was the middle of the night and Richie was actively upset, but it feels entirely different to go to bed together at the same time. He spits his toothpaste out in the sink and rinses out his month. He’s going to walk down to Richie’s room and apologize for suggesting something over the line. 

He marches to Richie’s room, fully preparing his speech. Richie’s door is ajar. Eddie somewhat cautiously pushes it open. Richie is standing by his dresser in sweats and a t-shirt. He still has his glasses on. When Eddie enters he spins to face him.

“Hey,” Eddie starts, ready for his speech.

“I want to say thank you,” Richie says, cutting him off. “I know this is a big ask, and you don’t have to do this, and you can change your mind, literally in the middle of the night you can get up and leave this bed, but I feel less anxious at the thought of going to sleep tonight that I usually do. And if I have a nightmare in the middle of the night and scream at you or hit you or something I’m really sorry and then I won’t make you do this again.”

Eddie feels his speech leave him. If this helps Richie then this is what he wants to be doing. He can ignore his own feelings, set aside whatever enjoyment he gets from sharing a bed with Richie because he’s not doing it for himself, he’s doing it for Richie. 

“Don’t worry about it,” he says a little stiffly because he doesn’t want Richie to know how much that reassured him that what he was doing wasn’t strange and corrupt, that the comfort exchanged between true friends could be pure even if all of his impulses weren’t. 

Richie gestures to his bed with an awkward little flourish. “You can choose which side you want tonight,” he says. “Don’t know if you’re picky.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he says. “Just so you know, I have an alarm set for work in the morning. Sorry if it wakes you up.”

“I can sleep through just about anything. You could have a whole marching band in here and it wouldn’t touch me.”

“You’d be a disaster in a home invasion,” Eddie says, moving towards the bed. He plumps the pillows, and Richie moves to the other side. He hops into bed and stretches out, smirking. 

“So, good lookin’,” he says, “How do you like your eggs in the morning?”

“Made by anyone but you,” Eddie responds. He slides into the bed and lays his head back against the pillows. Part of him doesn’t feel like going to sleep but he’s such a creature of habit he knows his body will shut down. 

Richie climbs in next to him. He tugs the covers over to himself, and pulls his phone out. “I’m going to mindlessly scroll twitter before I go to sleep,” he says. “Will the light bug you?” 

“Not especially,” Eddie responds. “Myra used to read in bed so I got used to going nodding off with some brightness.”

“I know the blue light is bad for my eyes of whatever but there’s nothing more soothing than be lulled to sleep by inane shouts into the void.”

“Exactly why I don’t have a twitter,” Eddie says. He reaches out and turns off the lamp on his side of the bed and lays back down, closing his eyes. “Now let me sleep.”

He’s still hyper aware of Richie’s presence in bed next to him. He can feel the hairs on his arm stand up and he doesn’t know how to fold his hands. He turns away from Richie, curling in on himself. He doesn’t want a repeated cuddling incident; his body can’t keep betraying him like that. 

He tries to calm his thoughts and inhale deeply. His therapist had suggested mediating and even though he wasn’t even close to there yet she’d still shown him some breathing exercises to help when he had panic attacks. Not that he was having a panic attack right now but he wasn’t exactly relaxed and he really did want to go to sleep.

He breathes in for eight, holds for two, breathes out for eight. He does it again, feeling the steady rhythm of his chest rising and falling. Richie’s mattress is slightly softer than his and he feels himself sinking down. He can’t forget that Richie is beside him but his presence feels comforting rather than anxiety provoking. Fucked as though the necessity is, this is his ideal way to fall asleep. Before he knows it he’s drifted off.

He wakes up about five minutes before his alarm goes off. Blessedly, Richie had stuck to his side of the bed and he’d stayed on his. Richie’s facing him, lips gently parted. Eddie wishes he could reach a hand out, cup Richie’s face in his hands. He wishes he could wake him up by kissing him gently-mouths closed because Eddie doesn’t think he’s at the point where morning breath doesn’t disgust him. Eddie wants, he wants in a way that consumes him. It feels so close, he could reach out and take it, let himself have what he wants when he desires it for once in his life. But Richie’s eyes would flick open, he would say “What are you doing?” and Eddie would pull his hand away like he’s been burned. And everything would change and Eddie can’t take a step backward, not now, now when it feels like he’s finally on an upward progression.

He turns his alarm off before it can go off and wake up Richie. He hops out of bed and pads down to his room. He runs through his morning routine fairly quickly, throwing his suit on and leaving the french press full of coffee out on the counter for Richie. He doesn’t bother going outside this morning to grind the beans because at this point Richie’s had a solid eight hours of sleep, unless he stayed up unnecessarily late on his phone (always a possibility, in which case he deserves to be woken up). Before he leaves Eddie does another little doodle; this time it’s the Richie figure sleeping, and in a little speech bubble Eddie draws a log being sawed. In case it isn’t clear enough he writes ‘you snore,’ underneath it.

Richie texts him at around 10. He says,

_its been so long since i shared a bed with anyone that i wasnt sure if i snored anymore_

_glad to know im still a menace_

**It’s a whole fucking logging operation.**

_somehow its even worse when i drink_

Eddie doesn’t say anything immediately, and a couple of minutes later his phone buzzes.

_didnt have any nightmares though. just dreamed i was trying to get to one of my sets but i wasnt in la i was like in this weird old timey world where everyone was on horses. and when i got to the venue it was actually a church and prince was performing a wedding service. so a weird dream but not really a nightmare and def not a deadlights dream_

**That’s good. Not really statistically significant yet but good data.**

_probably makes sense to keep repeating the experiment until we get some results we can work with. to be good statisticians or whatever_

**To be safe** , Eddie says. His palms are sweating,

Which is how he and Richie start sleeping in the same bed every night. It pretty quickly just becomes part of his regular routine. Get ready for bed in his room, get into bed with Richie, pass out while Richie goes on his phone, wake up either right before or with the alarm, and go back to his room to get ready for the day. It felt a little like freshman year of college when he would have to walk down the hallway to the shower. It’s a divide he needs to keep up, not showering there or leaving pajamas in Richie’s room. They’re not sharing a bedroom, Eddie is just physically reminding Richie he’s not dead so Richie won’t have nightmares. 

Sometimes he wakes up and they’re cuddling, sometimes they’re not. Eddie finds he keeps being drawn into the role of big spoon but sometimes he’ll wake up with his head on Richie’s chest, Richie’s arms curved around him just like when they were kids. Only instead of resting on thirteen year old Richie’s bony clavicle he comes to with his cheek pressed against the broad planes of his chest. He likes the mornings when he wakes up a little before his alarm goes off and he can just breathe in tandem with Richie. 

Every morning at work Eddie gets a text from Richie: no nightmares. Even without Eddie running a full analysis on the data it seems more and more likely that the lack of Richie’s Deadlights dreams might be a matter of causation and not just correlation. So there’s no reason at all to stop. Even though it makes Eddie’s skin thrum, falling asleep in bed next to Richie is the best sleep he’s never had. So maybe he’s selfish and maybe he’s taking advantage of his best friend but he’s mostly just so glad Richie can sleep through the night that nothing else matters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter count went up for this because I realized these boys have way too many issues to wrap it up yet. 
> 
> Come talk to me at twitter [@beepbeepbxtch](https://twitter.com/beepbeepbxtch) and tumblr [toziertool](https://toziertool.tumblr.com/)!


	9. we sing in the darkness, we open our eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie considers the facts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from 'Making Flippy Floppy'

The moment Eddie has been dreading has come; he has to go to New York to meet with Myra and their lawyers. He’s packed his bags and double checked everything, triple checking his Xanax supply in his toiletries bag. Richie drives him to LAX and it feels vastly different than the last time he dropped him off at the Bangor airport. Even though Eddie doesn’t want to do this just as much as he didn’t really want to return to his old life this time there’s Richie waiting at the end of it. Eddie can’t understand now how he previously got on a plane without knowing when the next time he would see Richie would be. This time, he’ll be with Richie again in three days, and even though that feels long, he’s grateful for the bounded span.

“Thanks for driving me so early,” Eddie says, unbuckling his seat belt.

“I’m gonna go home and go right back to sleep, don’t you worry your sweet little head. You’re the one stuck on a plane.”

“Don’t remind me,” Eddie says. “I don’t even get to sleep, I have to do work.” Eddie was taking three days out of the office to make this trip and he didn’t want to get behind while he was gone. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever done anything productive on a plane. I either take a Xanax and pass out or I watch mindless movies for hours. Now,” Richie says, switching tracks, “Don’t let her lawyers intimidate you. Put on your best tough guy face. Like this,” and he scrunches his face up, eyes squinting and eyebrows furrowing. “Don’t let them take away your masculinity.”

“It’s not about my masculinity, it’s about my assets, and I’m fine with an equitable split. I want this to be as amicable as possible. Just get in, get out.”

“Sounds like the last time I got head at a club,” Richie says. “Now hop out, you’re only three hours early, wouldn’t want you to miss your flight.”

Eddie climbs out the passenger seat and goes around the back of the car to pop the trunk. After he grabs his bag he sees Richie has come out of the driver’s door and is awkwardly standing by the side of the car, hands shoved into his pockets. He goes over to Eddie, dodging a passing car. 

“Hey,” he says when he’s standing next to him. “Text me when you land, okay?”

“Of course,” Eddie says. He’s sent Richie his flight details so the other man should be able to check when he lands but he appreciates that he wants a degree of certainty.

Richie hesitates for a moment and then reaches out and pulls him into a hug. Eddie doesn’t know what to do for a second, but soon wraps his arms around Richie’s middle. Richie rests his chin on top of his head. Eddie can feel Richie’s body press against him, the weight of his biceps around Eddie’s shoulders. 

“Be safe, okay?” Richie says. “Call me if anything goes wrong.”

“Statistically, flight travel is actually very safe,” Eddie responds. “Way safer than being in a car.”

“Fine, I’ll text you when I get home safe too, just so you know I’m not flipped over on the 405.” Richie gets back into the passenger seat. Eddie walks his suitcase to the sidewalk, and stands there and watches as Richie drives off. 

After he makes it through security Eddie once again finds himself in an airport with an inordinate amount of time to kill. So he does what he did before and calls someone. This time it’s Mike. He hasn’t spoken with him in a couple of weeks, and doesn’t even know if Mike’s still in Florida.

Mike picks up on the third ring. “Eddie!” he says happily. “What’s up?”

“I’m at the airport and I need a distraction from screaming toddlers.”

“I can do that,” Mike says. “Not like I have anything especially exciting to report.”

“How’s Florida?”

“Honestly, getting to be a little too much sun and sitting around. I thought I wanted to rest but I’m still itching for more,” says Mike. “I stayed in one place for my whole life and even though Florida is a better place to be than Maine I think I want to get moving again. See more of the country. Maybe the Southwest. I was actually thinking about driving to LA, if that would be okay. You guys wouldn’t have to put me up, I could find my own place to stay.”

“There's no way any of us would let that happen,” Eddie says. “I can’t exactly offer you Richie’s house but he and Bill are going to fight over who you’re staying with. I think Bill will win, Richie will try and convince you his couch is better than the bed in Bill’s guest room but I can’t imagine that’s true. Don’t you dare not take advantage of us for the rest of your life.”

Mike laughs. “You guys don’t owe me anything.”

“We absolutely do,” says Eddie. “But we’d want you to stay with us even if you hadn’t spent your whole adulthood keeping watch over a hellhole so we didn’t have to. Losers take care of each other. Plus, we want you here. Being together feels right.”

“I agree. We spent too much of our lives apart. I could stay for a while, if that’s okay.”

“Yeah, I’m sure Richie would love that. Someone else for him to try jokes out on.”

“How is Richie?” Mike asks.

“Good; better,” Eddie says. 

“Better?” Mike asks.

“Yeah, uh,” Eddie says, not sure how much of Richie’s secrets he should give away. “He’d been having bad dreams since Derry, you know, and they’ve gone away recently. So he’s sleeping better and he just seems much happier.”

Richie had been in an especially good mood the past week. He’d been cooking more, sometimes already at the stove when Eddie got home from work. He’d suggested they go to the movies and bought an extra sized popcorn he doused in butter even though Eddie warned him about his cholesterol, and said he’d refuse to have any (he’d snuck a couple of bites when Richie wasn’t looking). Richie had talked loudly and consistently throughout the movie, and even though Eddie kept sushing him but he couldn’t help emitting little snorts when Richie did a particularly spot on Voice. He thought Richie’s commentary made the mediocre movie much funnier than it had a right to be.

“I’m worried he’s going to have bad dreams while I’m gone,” Eddie confides. “It’s just gotten better and it would suck to have them come back.”

“Why would you being gone change anything?” Mike asks.

Eddie hadn’t told any of the Losers about his and Richie's new sleeping arrangements. Not because it was weird, because it wasn’t weird, but because it was none of their business. But lying to Mike about it would make it weird, showing that he was conscious of the fact this was a slightly abnormal thing for friends to do.

“Well, you know, as a comfort thing, we’ve started . . . sleeping in the same bed,” Eddie says. “Because it’s reassuring. You know, it’s nice to fall asleep with another person.” Eddie thinks it would be too personal to reveal that Richie has nightmares specifically about him dying and therefore finds it comforting to know Eddie is next to him, leaving an indent in the mattress from where he lay all night.

Mike holds a long pause. Finally, he asks, “Do you cuddle?”

“Sometimes,” Eddie mutters.

Mike pauses again. Then: “Eddie, that’s-that’s really gay.”

Eddie feels his face heat up. “Screw you dude,” he says. “You can’t just call soft shit gay.”

“I’m not saying it’s gay because it’s soft, I’m saying it’s gay because it sounds like two homosexual men who are finding an excuse to sleep in the same bed because that’s what they want to do anyway.”

“I don’t want to!”

“You get absolutely no enjoyment from sleeping in the same bed as Richie?”

Eddie splutters. “What-that doesn’t even-I’m doing it for him. It helps him.”

“Yes,” Mike says. “You know, there are lots of ways to soothe people who have nightmares. Have you thought about reading him a bedtime story?”

The idea of Eddie perched on Richie’s bed, copy of _Goodnight Moon_ in front of him, lulling Richie to sleep, would be comical if Eddie wasn’t so busy being indignant.

“That wouldn’t work, there’s an exchange of body heat thing that this requires for the full soothing effect to take place.”

“Okay. So you don’t want to try anything else and you don’t want Richie to have nightmares. So the only solution by the rules you’ve created is that you and Richie sleep in the same bed for the rest of his life.”

“Or, you know,” Eddie mumbles. “Until he doesn’t feel it’s necessary for his sleep schedule.”

“Eddie,” Mike says gently. “I don’t know if Richie’s ever going to feel like that.”

“What, you think Richie’s going to have nightmares for the rest of his life?” Eddie asks, concern rising in his throat.

“I don’t think Richie’s going to go looking for a reason not to sleep in the same bed as you,” Mike says.

Eddie feels a weird lightness in his head, a buzzing under his cheeks. “What do you mean?” he says.

“I mean if somebody described the situation to me and I didn’t know any of the people involved I would think that these men had feelings for each other.”

Eddie’s hand clutching the phone is suddenly sweaty. He can feel the moisture on the tips of his fingers. 

“It’s not like that for him,” Eddie says.

Mike lets the other unspoken half hang in the air. He doesn’t ask what it’s like for Eddie. He doesn’t call Eddie out on his perspective on the whole thing, if he thinks it’s more for him than two friends sharing a bed.

“Because I’m not on the outside I’m not going to pass judgement on my friends’ personal lives,” Mike says. “The only thing I will say is that you sleeping in the same bed as Richie is not a permanent solution to his nightmares. Because if it’s not like that for either you eventually one of you is going to want someone else in their bed. And if that’s not what you want you should have a talk sooner rather than later before the decision is entirely out of your hands.”

Eddie hadn’t yet imagined the conversation the first night Richie would bring someone home (something bound to happen eventually). He’s overcome by horrible visions of going down the hallway to Richie’s room on autopilot, opening the door, only to walk in on Richie and some very handsome blonde man in the midst of getting down to it. And worse, the feeling of going to sleep knowing Richie was next door asleep in the arms of someone other than him. He’s more troubled over the thought of someone being the big spoon to Richie’s little spoon than he is over Richie having sex with someone else.

This future feeling, this premonition of what was to come if Eddie continues on his current path, crashes through him in waves of jealous longing. This was unpleasant enough; Eddie couldn’t imagine how he’d react when the moment actually came when Richie shut his door to him. 

Which was worse, the sensation of being rejected by Richie or living in the agony of coming so close to having everything he wanted, and not getting it because he was too scared to take a chance? Eddie thought he knew which was the more unbearable option, but he didn’t want things to go back to the way they were. He’d been so scared since he moved and his existence finally started on an upward trajectory that he would upset the delicate balance of his new life. But something had changed, and changed for the better. Maybe more things could change.

“You’re right,” he tells Mike, surprising himself. “I mean, fuck it, right? Fuck being stagnant because you’re too scared to do anything else.”

“Losers club motto,” Mike replies. “We wouldn’t be us if we didn’t do the shit that scared us.”

Eddie’s phone buzzes. “Hold on one sec,” he says to Mike, and pulls the phone away from his ear. Richie’s texted him.

_played chicken with the other lane of traffic the whole drive home. don’t worry, everyone else flinched first_

Followed by:

_don’t forget to eat before you get on the plane even if you think you’re better than airport food because you don’t wanna hulk out mid air due to hangriness_

Eddie’s stomach grumbles. He’d only had a smoothie before they’d driven here; they’d left the house at 6 am and that was too early for him to feasibly want to put anything in his body. 

He puts his phone back to his ear. “Hey, I’m going to go eat,” he tells Mike. “Sorry to cut it short.”

“No, it’s fine,” Mike says. “It’s time for me to find some breakfast too. Whatever you want to say about Florida you can’t beat the fresh oranges.”

“You know LA is full of beautiful, organic food? Avocados, how did I miss out on avocados my whole life? Also, it’s not Florida.”

Mike laughs. “I’ll head out to you soon, okay?”

“You better,” Eddie says. “It really would be great if you came; just let us know when and we’ll pull together a whole welcoming committee.” 

“Thanks, Eddie,” Mike says. “I’ll think out the details and the route. Want to make sure I don’t miss anything on the way.”

“Sounds good man, talk to you soon,” Eddie says, and they hang up.

Eddie wanders the terminal looking for a place to get breakfast. There seems to be about a dozen burger places, which, even if Eddie ate red meat, would not be palatable at this time of the day. He finds a passable cafe eventually and gets a wrap. He’s so glad he’s able to dine out now. Before if he ever had to travel he’d pack his own food and then freak out about it spoiling somehow before he got to eating it. It would come down to an internal battle between the health concerns of skipping meals and the dangers of contaminated food. 

He texts Richie,

**Found something to eat. You’re taking the fall if I get food poisoning on the plane.**

_just roll down the window and puke out the side like i do in lyfts_

He finishes up his meal, pays, and makes his way to his gate. In the boarding line, he texts Richie back.

**Spotted: a whole family wearing neon green shirts with ‘Johnson Family Vacation Extravaganza’ printed on the back.**

_steal one and infiltrate them_

_dude we should have losers club shirts_

_‘im with stupid’ and just a bunch of arrows going in the same direction_

**Who’s at the end of the stupid chain?**

_me, probably_

**Nah. Definitely Bill.**

_aw, eds, you think im smart?_

Eddie considers firing off something snarky. Instead, he types back:

**You’re smarter than the average bear.** It was something a teacher he liked in high school had said to him once, and silly as it was it had stuck with him. Plus it still didn't score very high on the scale of emotional honesty.

_thnx :)_

_not really a bear though, more of an otter_

**What?** Eddie responds. 

_u gotta learn your gay terms dude_

_ur def a twink_

**I don’t know what that means.**

_google it_

At this point, Eddie is at the front of the line, so he puts his phone away to board the plane. Eddie has an aisle seat, blessedly, and when the plane stabilizes in the air he pulls his laptop out and tries to work. But the numbers on his spreadsheets keep blurring together and fuzzing out. He can’t help coming back to his conversation with Mike. He feels called out, embarrassed that one of his own friends can see through him. Because Mike is right about half of it; sleeping in the same bed as Richie means something more to Eddie than it would if it was any of the other Losers. 

But could Mike be right about the other half? That it wasn’t just a comfort thing for Richie, that he might like waking up with Eddie’s arms pulled around him just as much as Eddie liked the weight of him against his own body?

Eddie hadn’t let himself hope before. But now he thought about every interaction he and Richie had ever had, starting when they were kids. Richie’s arm slung around his shoulder, Richie climbing through his window with the latest comic for them to read together. And Richie as an adult, leaving a copy of the Wall Street Journal out on the counter on Saturday mornings because he knew Eddie liked to read it with his coffee. Richie picking up the organic detergent from Whole Foods that Eddie preferred. Richie hip checking him when they walked down the sidewalk, putting a hand on the small of his back when they went through a doorway. 

Eddie spent his whole life over-analyzing things, but he’d locked away his interactions with Richie in a box inside his head. Second guessing everything Richie did would drive him insane. He’d go down a spiral anytime Richie laughed too hard at one of his jokes. But he wasn’t seeing Richie for three days and he could let his mind spread out more. 

Maybe, just maybe, Richie felt the same way.

\----

It’s dark when Eddie touches down in New York. There’s something beautiful about the city when you sweep in from above, the sudden rise of the spires piercing the night sky. He feels a sudden swell of warmth for the city he called home for so many years. As soon as the wheels touch down he powers up his phone. 

Richie’s texted him. 

_spent 3 hours looking at dogs on adoption websites. im thinkin a mastiff. like really massive so you look even tinier in comparison_

Before he can address that Eddie texts,

**Landed safely.**

Followed by,

**Do not get a dog while I’m gone. I’m allergic.**

_ur sure as shit not dude, mike’s sheepdogs would fully lick your face and nothing ever happened_

Richie sends him a screenshot of an adoption page. Eddie finds a jowly, big nosed face with soulful eyes staring back at him. 

_his name is rufus! rufus!!!_

**Should that mean anything to me?**

_rufus!! like bill and teds excellent adventure. we def saw that in theaters_

Eddie remembers now. Richie had spent the next two weeks playing air guitar and screaming out “Wyld Stallyns!” at random intervals.

**No dog without my input,** Eddie concedes.

_obviously not. its ur dog too_

The fasten seat belt sign flickers off before he has a chance to respond. He stretches out and begins to gather his things. As he disembarks the plane he thinks about Richie looking at dog pictures and wanting to bring a living creature into his space, and by extension Eddie’s space. Richie imagines them owning a dog together; he wants them to get a dog together. That definitely implies some kind of permanence towards Eddie staying with him, and now that Eddie’s started reading into things he can’t make himself stop.

He makes his way through the airport, dodging loud crowds of tourists. He gets into the taxi line, and blessedly doesn’t have to wait very long. He shoves his suitcase in the trunk, and hops in the back seat, giving the driver the address of his hotel in Midtown. The cab driver is playing music loudly in a language Eddie doesn’t understand and seems content to ignore him. He mutes the TV screen slung around the back of the passenger scene that plays news clips and ads on an endless loop, and instead turns his head to stare out the window.

He watches the city roll out around him as the cab thunders down the Brooklyn-Queens expressway. The buildings crowd close to the road, looming over the highway in blocks of grey. The sun has already gone down and far off in the distance he can see the skyline of Manhattan over the horizon. That part of the city is pretty from a distance, even if Eddie doesn’t much care for the sprawl of Queens. He’d spent enough of his life there with Myra. 

All on the cab ride on the way to the hotel he thinks about what living with Richie long term, being with Richie, would look like. Not that different from home things are now really, just with a great big bounding dog meeting him in the doorway, a kiss he would place on Richie’s cheek as he leaned over him sitting at the counter. 

He googles the hotel he’s staying at and finds out it blessedly has a restaurant on the ground floor. Even though he’s done nothing but sit on a plane and look at a computer all day he’s exhausted and doesn’t want to brave the crowds of Manhattan. 

Once in midtown he finds the stress of driving in the city comes back to him. He wants to roll down his window and scream at any car that cuts them off, or the pedestrians who ignore the red hand of the crossing signal. But he really doesn’t want to express backseat road rage. He feels a sense of anxiety settle over him while watching someone squatting outside the subway entrance yelling at passersby. There are just too many people everywhere and the buildings are too tall. Have they always been this tall? He can hear sirens echoing in the distance. 

The cabbie deposits him outside his hotel, and speeds off after Eddie’s card goes through. He trundles through the lobby, checks in, and makes his way upstairs to drop off his bag. Once up there, he takes a shower to wash off the plane grime and changes into slacks and a polo. He checks his phone. Richie has texted him again.

_so i was working my way through the brain fog of my memories in ny (the snl cast really loves to party) and through the blur i think i remember a couple of cool spots and like essential ny shit to do. cos im sure u did ny wrong the first time_

**You can’t do NY wrong**

_i believe u can do anything eds. belive in urself._ _okay here’s my definitive plan to make eddie’s visit not suck_

**Hit me.**

_so ur first night after ur done being in meetings and shit u go downtown and hit up katz deli. then when ur done stuffing ur face u walk to the library_

**Why would I go to a library?**

_its not a real library, its a bar that has books and shit. idk if they still do it but they used to have a great happy hour deal_

**It is likely I’ll want to drink when I’m done for the day.**

_okay night two. this time u go to greenwich village. then you go to this italian place carbone, fancy but worth it. its where i took my parents to show them i made it. then walk over to julius’; it’s one of the oldest bars in the city_

_and thats richies surefire plan to a fun trip. the only other thing u could do to make it an authentic tozier experience is to smoke weed in washington square park_

**No thank you. I don’t need any more legal complications on this trip.**

He remembers getting high when he was a teenager. Richie had scored some weed from one of the older kids who would buy him cigarettes. He’d rolled through the Barrens all excited one day, holding up a dime bag. 

“You know that’s illegal, right?” Stan had said primly.

“There are no laws out here, Stanny,” Richie had responded. He’d proceeded to roll what seemed to be the shittiest joint in the world; Eddie wasn’t positive because it was the first joint he’d seen. Richie put it to his lips, flicked the lighter, and took a massive pull. He started coughing up immediately, hacking up most of the smoke in a billowing cloud. 

“Serves you right,” Stan said.

Richie took another hit and only coughed a little. He offered the joint to Stan “C’mon, might loosen you up.”

Stan wrinkled his nose. “No thank you.”

Richie shrugged and turned to Bill. “Want some?”

“W-w-why not,” Bill said and took the joint from him. He took a pull and fared no better than Richie did. “That tastes rank, Richie. I don’t know what good w-w-weed is b-b-but that’s not it.”

“If it gets me high I don’t care,” Richie said. “I can cultivate taste later.”

Bill offered the joint to Mike and he shook his head no. “My grandfather will kill me if he smells it on me.”

“Same with my mom,” Ben piped in.

Bill turned to Eddie. “What about you?”

Eddie contemplated the joint. His mom would also kill him if she suspected he was high. But it felt like he couldn’t do anything right anyway. She’d grounded him for taking too much time coming home after school, dragged him to the doctor when she heard him sneeze at breakfast. If she was going to try and control every aspect of his life no matter what he did he might as well have some fun along the way. 

“Fuck it,” he said, and plucked the joint from Bill’s hand. Richie whooped. 

Eddie took the smallest, most delicate pull he could imagine. He could feel the smoke behind his teeth. He let it fill his mouth before it slipped out between his lips, not really inhaling.

“Eddie baby, living life on the wild side,” Richie said. “The new resident bad boy of our group.”

Eddie took a bigger inhale. That time he felt the smoke pass down his throat, into his lungs. It burned the roof of his mouth when he pulled it down, and he started to cough.

“I’m bad to the bone,” he'd said while hacking, and Richie laughed, in the way Eddie knew was with him and not at him. 

Eddie had spent most of his adult life thinking he’d never gotten high. Convinced he had asthma in college he never touched weed, and it’s not like he got many offers outside of that. He’d liked getting high as a kid, he remembered. It had made the thoughts in his head slow down until he could look at them from a distance. He could waste time doing dumb shit without worrying about the consequences. 

**Do you know where to get weed? Back home, I mean.**

He doesn’t realize until he’s sent it that he just referred to LA as home.

_eds do u wanna get high???_

**Yeah, you smoke weed, right? I haven’t seen you do it since I moved in so I wasn’t sure.**

_yeah i didn't know if it would bug u. but i most definitely smoke weed. i owned like 3 bongs in college_

**So you have a hookup?**

_r u kidding? u know we live in california, right?_

**Is that a yes?**

_we’re overflowing with legal weed over here baby. u can walk into a dispensary and tell them u want something that’ll make u want to write the next moonlight sonata and they’ll be all like ‘oh, have some durban poison’ and u walk out with ur little container of greens_

**I don’t know if I want to smoke anything with poison in the name.**

_k girl scout cookies it is_

Eddie doesn’t know if he’ll like getting high as an adult but he wants to try. He wants to get high on Richie’s deck and watch the sun set, listening to Richie do Voice after Voice, Eddie’s mouth thick with laughter. He wanted to feel fuzzy enough to let the soft thoughts inside of himself spool out on gentle spirals, have silly conversations that dissipate like the smoke trailing from the tip of a joint. 

He makes his way downstairs to the hotel restaurant and orders a salad with a glass of white wine. While waiting for his food he checks his email. He has something from his lawyer. He opens it up, reads it while frowning a little. His lawyer says that Myra’s lawyer got in contact with him to ask if he’d be willing to get lunch with her before the divorce proceedings in the afternoon. He texts Richie pretty immediately.

**Myra wants to get lunch tomorrow. Good idea/bad idea?**

_bad idea. u need a buffer_

Eddie looks at the email again. Reflecting on things over the past couple of months, he’d come to the conclusion he doesn’t feel great about how he left Myra. It was the only way he could’ve broken free, it was the action he needed to take, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t something cruel about blindsiding her and then just leaving, no matter how she’s treated him.

**I’m going to do it,** he texts back. **Might as well go in prepared tomorrow.**

_let me know if she tries to kidnap u_

Eddie responds to his lawyer’s email and tells her he’s willing to meet up. His lawyer suggests a spot not too far away from her office. Eddie tells her to let Myra know to expect him there at 12:30. His salad comes then, and he puts his phone away, shutting off his email for the evening. 

His anxiety builds throughout dinner as he thinks about talking to Myra. His final words to her as he was leaving were intended to be his final words forever to her in some ways. In the moment, he hadn’t imagined the follow up, and he’d been putting off thinking about it for several months. Now he had to face her again, ready his arguments and defenses all over. 

After he finishes dinner he goes back up to his room to get ready for bed. Unpacking his toiletries, he looks at his Xanax. He wants to take one, wants to feel the blissful numbness spread through him. He wants to go asleep without thinking about the unpleasantness he’s going to endure tomorrow, drift off without rehearsing what he’s going to say. 

He pulls out his phone.

**What if I wake up tomorrow and realize getting lunch with her is a terrible idea and go into my meeting with my lawyer in the midst of a panic attack?**

Richie responds pretty much immediately. 

_then u cancel on that bitch. u can show up to lunch and immediately decide to bail. ill be waiting outside in a getaway car and we’ll leave the whole scene in the dust_

Eddie looks at his phone. He types back, **Where would we go?**

_niagara falls baby. go over the side in a barrel_

**Better be one hell of a barrel.**

_at this point i think we're indestructible_

Eddie looks at his Xanax bottle and places it back into his toiletry bag. He responds, **I’m going to go to sleep now; I’ll talk to you tomorrow.**

_sweet dreams,_ Richie texts back, with a little sparkle emoji added on at the end. Eddie sets his alarm, pulls back the covers, and gets into bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started this chapter and I was like, finally, I'm getting to Eddie's New York adventure! And then it got away from me.
> 
> Eddie is *so close* to getting it (unfortunately it's going to get worse before it gets better).
> 
> Note: I am not advocating for not taking your prescribed medication when necessary!! Xanax is a very helpful tool, and there's no shame/problem with using as needed. But as somebody who has anxiety problems and is prescribed Xanax, I usually try and take it as a last resort, after I try to do breathing exercises or reach out to a friend. If you have any thoughts on how I wrote this moment please let me know!
> 
> I also do not approve of Richie's use of the word bitch but it's unfortunately in character. 
> 
> Oh, and I started a theater au! It's my little niche baby because it draws from my time working in theater, specifically working as a stage manager. But if you're into at all into theater or nyc, check it out [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24009685/chapters/57761209) :)
> 
> Come talk to me at twitter at [@beepbeepbxtch](https://twitter.com/beepbeepbxtch) and on tumblr at [toziertool](https://toziertool.tumblr.com/)!


	10. you make me shiver, i feel so tender

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie explores New York

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from 'Life During Wartime.' The next lyric is 'we make a pretty good team' but it was too long to include.

Eddie’s alarm goes off and he groans. His body is still three hours behind, and by the time he’s caught up on his jet lag he’ll be heading back to California. He also didn’t sleep as well as alone as he had before he and Richie started going to bed together. His body must’ve gotten used to sharing a bed with someone else and was having trouble adjusting. 

He refuses to drink the terrible hotel room coffee so he makes his way downstairs to see if the hotel has any to go cups in their cafe. It doesn’t, so he makes his way out into the city. 

The streets are much nicer in the early morning daylight than they were last night. It’s not crowded enough yet that he needs to shove past people. He ignores several bodegas that advertise coffee on their awnings until he finds a cafe, all sleek white counters and glass pastry displays. He gets his black coffee, throwing a dollar into the tip jar on the way out.

He picked the hotel because it was close to his attorney's office, so it’s a fairly short walk. He’s worried about running into Myra, even though he knows she’s in her own separate meeting with her own attorney. He checks his phone; he hasn’t heard anything from Richie but that’s to be expected. He wonders if Richie had a nightmare last night; he considers texting him to ask, but Richie will tell him if he wants to. 

He takes the elevator up to his lawyer’s office. They spend the next several hours going over his assets, his and Myra’s joint checking accounts, and discussing what he should expect to pay in alimony. His lawyer is being meticulous, which Eddie appreciates. Soon enough it’s twelve fifteen and they’re wrapping up. 

Eddie heads outside with a pit in his stomach. His lawyer had suggested Bryant Park Cafe; it was fairly touristy, but Eddie’s goal for this lunch was not to discover the real New York. He doesn’t bother checking his phone for directions; he’s always been able to guide himself, some kind of innate compass showing him the way.

Myra is already there when he arrives. She’s changed her hair; she’s grown out her bangs and she’s wearing it wavier. She makes eye contact with him but doesn’t make any other acknowledgement that she's seen him. He makes his way over to her, dodging between waiters. 

He takes a seat. “Hello, Myra,” he says stiffly.

“Hi Eddie,” she responds. There’s an awkward pause.

“How’s your family?” he asks.

“Oh, you know,” she says. “We were all worried about daddy watching pneumonia but it was just a little bit of a cough.”

“That’s good,” Eddie says. Since all of his immediate family is dead she can’t ask the same question of him, so silence reigns once more. 

“You must be wondering why I wanted to meet,” she says. Eddie nods, but lets her continue. “When you left I was very unhappy. At first I didn’t understand what I did wrong, how I’d failed as a wife. How I could have disgusted you enough to turn you gay. And then I got upset at you. I blamed you for everything that was wrong in my life. I hoped you would get AIDs and drop dead.” Eddie, almost without meaning to, takes a sharp inhale of breath. Myra doesn’t notice and continues on. “But a month passed and I still felt awful. I realized leaving wasn’t what was making me so unhappy. I was unhappy because I’d made you the center of my life and didn’t know how to live by myself. I kept thinking about something that you said: that you were taking charge of your own care. I didn’t know how to take care of myself because I spent all my time trying to take care of you. And I was terrible at it,” she says, starting to sniffle. “I know now I wasn’t good to you. I thought we were so happy together because we had all the things we were supposed to make us happy. And I was happy; I know you don’t think I was, but you don’t get to tell me how I felt. I was as happy as I knew how to be. But you weren’t happy, and I just didn’t care. Oh Eddie,” she says, beginning to tear up. “Why didn’t I care?”

Eddie wasn’t expecting any of this. He was prepared to stand firm in his convictions, to tell her he’d needed to leave for the both of them. He hadn’t expected her to come to the same conclusion. 

“I didn’t always make it easy to take care of me,” he says awkwardly.

“That doesn’t excuse what I did,” she says, beginning to cry in earnest. “We didn’t have any friends Eddie! And that was my fault, that was all my fault.”

Eddie looks around. They’re beginning to draw attention to themselves, which Eddie really doesn’t want. He reaches out and pats the back of her hand. 

“I’m sorry, is what I wanted to say. I’m sorry I wasn’t a better wife,” she sniffles, getting some control over herself.

“You being a bad wife wasn’t the problem. We didn’t have a functioning, healthy relationship, not ever. You tried to control me, Myra. You picked out everything in the house, chose which doctors I would go to. You even bought my clothes! I’m a grown man, I should’ve been choosing my own outfits."

“I thought if I did all those nice things for you you wouldn't be able to leave me. But you left me anyway.”

“They weren’t nice things. I know you thought you were doing what was best but you never asked me what I wanted.”

She pulls out a kleenex and blows her nose. “I know. I would have done a lot of things differently. But in the end, maybe you would have been right anyway. Maybe we never could have made each other happy.”

Eddie doesn’t think this would be a good time to point to the gay thing, the final nail in the coffin of any chance their marriage had at succeeding. 

“Are you happy now, Eddie?” she says. “Did leaving make you happy?”

“Yes,” he tells her, meeting her eyes. “I’m happy now. I feel like I’m in control for the first time in my life.”

“That’s good,” Myra says. “Maybe one day I’ll be happy,” she says a little mournfully. 

Eddie feels his throat clench. He and Myra had been married for seven years, and even though he never loved her like a husband should he can’t help but still be affected by seeing her unhappy, especially because it seemed like she had done some genuine processing of their disaster of a marriage, and was expressing real remorse for how she’d behaved. 

“You will be happy,” he tells her. “You’ll find someone who’s capable of loving you in the ways I couldn’t.”

“I hope so,” Myra says. “I just feel too old to start over.” She pauses. “Who’s the man who makes you so happy?”

“There is no man, I’m just doing well on my own,” Eddie says.

She frowns. “I thought you were living with someone?” she asks.

“I am,” he tells her. “But we’re just friends.”

“Why?” she asks him. He looks into her eyes. They’re guileless, open. She genuinely wants to know. 

“Because I don’t know if he’s interested,” he tells her honestly.

She purses her lips. “But you love him. You went to him when you left me.”

Eddie doesn’t know how to lie very well, and this is maybe the first honest conversation he and Myra have ever had, so he makes a choice.

“Yes,” he says. “I love him."

“Then Eddie, you should be with him. You ended our marriage to go to him, and you’re not even with him?”

“I ended our marriage for many reasons,” he interjects.

“Being left for someone else isn’t pleasant, but what’s even worse is when the man who left you won’t even do the thing he set out to do. Oh, Eddie. You deserve to be happy too.”

“Thank you, Myra,” he says, surprised. “We both do.”

The waiter comes by to take their orders; they both get salads. 

“You eat out now,” Myra points out.

“Yeah, I worked on that for a while,” he says. “Turns out I love Thai food.”

“But your peanut allergy!” she says fearfully.

He sighs. “Myra, I don’t have a peanut allergy. Or a grass allergy or a shellfish allergy. There’s nothing wrong with me. At least allergen wise. I think I am lactose intolerant though,” he says. “But you can take pills to treat that.”

They talk for the rest of lunch. It’s stilted, but it’s not antagonistic. The things he didn’t like about Myra are still present but easier to deal with now that he’s no longer married to her. She tells him that she’s started working at a real estate office, and goes out with her coworkers for margarita nights on Thursdays. She sounds like she’s making a real effort to fill up her life with more things, friends and hobbies. She still talks over him to some extent, still fills up the gaps in their conversation with meaningless chatter. But she tunes in to what he has to say, nodding and following along in a way she never did before.

They get the check, and Eddie insists they split it down the middle. “Might as well make one division of costs today easy.”

“Oh, it won’t be so bad. Isn’t this better than going in ready to scream at each other?” Myra says. “I just thought it would be nice if we could start this meeting out on the right foot.”

“It is nice,” he says. “I don’t want to yell at each other anymore.”

He checks his phone on the way out. Richie’s texted him:

_how did it go??_

**Shockingly well. She apologized.**

_what the actual fuck_

_has she been bodysnatched???_

**I think being alone has been good for her. I guess people can change.**

_u tempted to call off this whole divorce thing now?_

**Still gay. I’m incompatible with marriage to a woman.**

He and Myra walk back to the attorney’s office, making idle chit chat. The meeting doesn’t go nearly as bad as Eddie was dreading. Myra gets the house, which makes sense because he’d relinquished his claim on it by leaving. She says she’s going to sell it and buy a smaller apartment somewhere in the city. 

They finish going through their shared assets and finish up for the day, planning on tackling alimony tomorrow. Myra stays to talk with her lawyer for a little bit and Eddie heads out, saying goodnight to all. 

He checks his earlier texts from Richie. This is one of two nights he’s going to be in New York, and, since his day has gone far better than expected, he hopes he’s on his way to a pleasant night too. He stops at his hotel room to change and wash off some of the city grime he feels accumulating on himself. He still hates taking the train so he catches a cab. 

Katz is not the type of deli he expected. It’s enormous, two stories dominating the corner of the street. There’s large blocks outside stacked on top of each other that spell out ‘KATZ.’He gets inside; it's a pretty big dining room, with small framed photos of different celebrities who’d been there crowding every wall. He gets a table by himself and sits down.

He texts Richie:

**Okay, I’m at Katz. What do I get?**

_u gotta get the reuben. best goddamn sandwich in the city._

**You know I don’t eat red meat.**

_make an exception. trust me_

When the waiter comes by he orders the reuben. He keeps texting Richie as he waits for his food. Richie tells him about his day so far; he’s had a meeting with his team to discuss his new material, and how to best brand himself as a newly out comedian.

_oh mike texted. he wants to come visit. i told him hell yes_

**I know, I talked to him from the airport yesterday. It would be great if he came, especially for a while.**

_la crew roll deep_

Eddie’s sandwich arrives. They’ve managed to fit an insane amount of sliced pastrami between two slices of white bread. Even though he hates when people take photos of their food at restaurants he pulls out his phone to snap one for Richie.

**You recommended a monster to me.**

_just unhinge your jaw like a snake_

Eddie knows this sandwich is terrible for his cholesterol. He takes a bite of the meat off the end. It’s warm and soft and falls apart in his mouth. The mustard on top is tangy and sets off the meat well. He takes another bite.

Soon enough, he’s demolished the sandwich.

**You were right, that was really good.**

_u gotta trust me sometimes_

He pays and heads out. 

**Next stop on the Richie Tozier tour: the book bar.**

The night is dark and bursting with sound. Threads of conversation snake by him as he makes his way down Houston street. It seems like every third person he sees on the sidewalk is smoking a cigarette, but Eddie almost doesn’t mind. It smells familiar.

It’s only a Thursday, so it’s not too crazy, but Eddie’s still surprised by the amount of people out. New York is just so much more concentrated than LA; every square inch of Manhattan is teaming with people. Since he’s had a good day and doesn’t have to live here anymore it seems energizing rather than draining.

The bar Richie recommended looks divey from the outside and Eddie considers it warily. He doesn’t tend to go to bars without a cocktail menu or a wine list, when he bothers to go to bars at all. But things have been going well so far, so why not. 

It’s dimly lit when he gets inside, a narrow walkway passing by the bar leading into a back room with chairs and tables. There’s people crowded all along the bar, but the back is pretty clear. 

He orders a vodka cranberry from the tatted up bartender, and she hands him a little plastic toy; when he looks at her in confusion she tells him it’s buy one get one free during happy hour. He makes his way to the back, where there’s wooden booths and little tables set up. There’s paintings of different horror authors hung up, bookshelves scattered with tomes attached to the wall. There’s a projection screen in the back playing some movie Eddie doesn’t recognize.

He texts Richie again.

**I’m too old and not cool enough to be here.**

_ur plenty fucking cool. but yeah, i dont know of any bars in the city that really cater to our age group. couldve done some more research i guess._

Eddie looks around. There’s little pockets of people laughing and chatting. They’re playing the Buzzcocks, one of the bands he remembers Richie liking in high school. Richie would endlessly riff off their name and Eddie would laugh even while he told him it was juvenile.

Maybe he’s not cool enough to be here but who gives a shit? 

He texts Richie back,

**No, it’s great.**

He keeps texting back and forth with Richie as he finishes his first drink, then his second drink, then his third drink. He tries to explain the plot of the movie they’re showing on the screen in the back, but even without the alcohol it would be incomprehensible. Richie keeps trying to figure out what it is by googling details but he doesn’t have any luck. 

Eventually Eddie is a little tipsy and he has no desire to be hungover for the meetings tomorrow. He settles up with the bartender and heads out into the night, hailing a cab. It’s 10 pm, which he knows isn’t really that late, but seems late to him. 

He gets back to the hotel, showers, and collapses into bed. **okay im done,** he texts Richie. **kaspbrak out for the night**

_successful solo venture?_

**v successful. crushed it**

_fuck yeah_

**okay goodnight,** Eddie says. He feels his sleepy drunk head pulling him under.

_night eds_

\----

Eddie blessedly doesn’t wake up hungover the next day. He attributes that to the glass of water he got up in the middle of the night to chug. 

He gets dressed and makes his way to the same cafe he did yesterday morning. He and Myra are going to be in joint meetings all day but he’s no longer dreading them.

When they break for lunch he checks his phone. Richie hasn’t texted him. He decides to fire off, **Despite our amicable terms, Myra still is trying to take me for all I’m worth. Don’t worry, my lawyer has her lawyer by the balls.**

Richie doesn’t respond for the rest of lunch. When they break for the day Richie has texted him back.

_thats nice_

Eddie frowns at his phone. Not exactly the response he expected or wanted. Eddie gathers his things and heads outside before he texts back. He starts making his way back to his hotel; he wants to change before dinner. He’s decided to go to the Italian place Richie recommended. He waits till he’s back in the hotel room before he responds,

**What’s going on at home?**

_nothing really. talked to bev last night_

**How’s she doing?**

_she’s fine_

Eddie frowns at his phone again. Something feels wrong and he doesn’t know why.

He doesn’t say anything back. He changes into a slightly more casual shirt and pants, then makes his way out of the hotel to catch a cab to the Village. He gets out and checks the restaurant out. There’s a large neon sign outside, but the font gives the impression of classiness instead of dinginess. 

Eddie makes his way inside. It’s a dining room with high ceilings and a retro tile patterned floor. The tables are set with white table clothes, and there’s waiters rushing around with trays of pasta. It’s a very different atmosphere from the deli last night but Eddie likes it here too. 

A waiter brings him to his table and he pulls out his phone to text Richie. **What should I get here?** he asks. 

The waiter has already taken his drink order by the time Richie responds.

_whatever, its all good_

Eddie puts his phone away. His good mood from earlier has mostly dissipated. Dinner is much more boring without Richie to text, even if the wine is excellent and the chicken delicious. He finishes up pretty quickly, pays up, and heads out. He considers his next move. Since he’s not feeling great he could just head back to the hotel. But it’s his last night in New York and it feels stupid to ruin it for himself just because Richie is texting him in a slightly different tone. 

It’s just a ten minute walk to the bar Richie recommended. On the way over Eddie passes Washington Square Park. He considers texting a joke about stopping to get high there to Richie but doesn’t want to keep bugging him when Richie clearly doesn’t want to engage with him.

He gets to the bar and makes his way inside. It’s nicer and slightly bigger than the Library was. There’s paper lanterns hanging up from the ceiling, and red string lights hung around the room. Eddie makes his way to the bar and orders a mojito. Taking his first sip, he looks around the space. He notices a large rainbow American flag hanging from the wall behind the bar. He takes another look around the space. It’s mostly filled with men, and if Eddie had to take a guess, he’d say most of them were gay.

Unable to stop himself, he pulls out his phone to text Richie.

**Did you send me to a gay bar?**

_yeah, thought you’d get a kick out of it_

On a different night in a different city with different people he would. Eddie wants to say, “I wish you were here to be at my first gay bar with me.” But he doesn’t. He just keeps drinking his mojito, scrolling through his phone.

As he orders a second drink, he notices a man down further on the bar looking at him. When Eddie catches his eye he smiles.

Feeling suddenly like stirring something up, he pulls up his text thread with Richie. He has no idea why Richie’s texts have become so abrupt but he wants to push him into some kind of reaction.

**Think this guy at the bar is hitting on me,** he texts. **Should I go talk to him?**

Richie responds very quickly.

_great idea!! u should be putting urself out there_

Eddie feels his stomach drop. That’s what he gets for trying to incite a jealous reaction. 

Before he can say anything back he hears a voice from above him. “Hey,” the man from the other end of the bar says, “I would offer to buy you a drink, but it looks like you just took care of that for yourself.”

“You can buy me the next one,” Eddie tells him. He’s pissed, pissed at Richie for running so hot and cold, pissed at himself for caring so much and refusing to let himself meet people because he’s hung up on Richie. 

Eddie and the man from the bar chat for a while. His name is Gregory, and he works as a bookkeeper for a shipping company. He’s not particularly funny but he’s nice and listens to Eddie’s stories attentively. Eddie would rather be sitting at the bar texting Richie, or even better yet, with Richie, but this is better than being alone.

Eddie finishes his fourth drink of the night, and checks his phone. It’s 11 pm and even though his flight isn’t particularly early he still wants to get some sleep.

“It was nice meeting you,” he tells Gregory. “But I’m really only in town for the night, and I think what’s best for me is just to head back to my hotel by myself.”

“That’s fine,” Gregory says. “It was really nice talking to you. Can I give you my number? In case you’re ever in New York again and have more time.”

Eddie has no intention of ever talking to this man again, but he takes it to be polite. He says goodnight and leaves him at the bar, heading out to the night air. 

Swaying a little bit, he grabs a taxi and makes his way back to the hotel. He’s too tired to do anything other than take his clothes and shoes off when he gets back to the room, even though he feels gross not showering. The alcohol is pulling him under and he doesn’t want to pass out in the shower and hit his head. Instead, he just sets his alarm and crawls underneath the covers. 

He dreams of the cavern. He’s coming out of the tunnel and he sees Richie in the Deadlights. But he doesn’t have the fence post in his hand. He’s useless. He runs over to where Richie is floating upwards and tries to grab onto his feet, but he’s too high. Slowly, Richie starts floating towards Pennywise’s open mouth.

Eddie doesn’t know where the others are. He’s screaming, begging them to help. Richie is suspended so high in the air that Eddie knows it would be just as dangerous for him to fall. 

He can’t do anything, and then Richie’s floating between Pennywise’s sharp rows of teeth. He’s going closer and closer to the lights, moving down the monster’s throat.

Without warning, Pennywise snaps his mouth shut. The light in the cavern is extinguished, plunging them into the sickly green glow. Eddie can hear a swallowing sound, a gulp echo through the space. When Eddie’s eyes adjust he sees Pennywise looming over him, smiling with his rows of sharpened razors.

“You couldn’t save him,” It croons. “Little Eddie wasn’t brave enough to rescue anyone. Now he’s gone, gone, gone, and it’s all your fault. I ate him, I ate your world, and now I’m going to eat you too.” He sees Pennywise’s claw reach out to puncture him, and he doesn’t care, he just wants to let it happen because Pennywise is right, he couldn’t save Richie and he doesn’t deserve to save himself. 

He wakes up gasping and sweating. The sheets are tangled all around his legs and he’s somehow managed to push himself diagonally across the bed. He checks his phone. It’s 3 am. 

He knows now how Richie felt all those nights he woke up from his nightmares. He can tell himself all he wants Richie is okay and not dead, he knows that because he talked to him today. But what if he’s wrong? What if his whole life with Richie is some kind of fever dream he concocted as an escape from the real world, the real world where he let Richie die deep underneath the ground?

Not stopping to think about it, he pulls up Richie’s number and calls him. It rings for a couple of times before the other man picks up.

“Eddie?” he says, sounding anxious. “Are you okay? It’s really late for you.”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Eddie responds. “I just-I had a nightmare. And it sucked. And I wanted to make sure you were still alive.”

Richie’s quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I know how rough that shit is.”

“It’s okay, I know now it’s not real, it just freaked me out.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Richie asks.

“Not really,” Eddie says, pushing himself up against the headboard. “It was pretty much what you’d expect.”

“I’m okay. I’m alive and you’re going to see me tomorrow.” Richie pauses again. “So you didn’t take that guy back to your hotel room?”

“What? No, of course not,” Eddie says. 

“Oh,” Richie responds. “Why not?”

Eddie doesn’t say ‘Because all I want is you.’ Instead, he tells a different part of the truth. “I just don’t think I’m interested in having casual sex right now. And all it could have been is causal sex because I’m only in town for one more night.”

“Good to know what you want,” Richie says neutrally.

Eddie sighs. “Yeah, it’s good to know,” he says, hoping he doesn’t sound as morose as he feels. 

“Well, now that you’ve verified I’m still among the living I should let you get back to sleep,” Richie says. “I know you need your full eight hours.”

“Would you . . . stay on the line with me?” Eddie asks. “I think it would help me drift off. You know, if I just listened to your voice.” He’s still terrified even though he doesn’t want to admit it, terrified when he gets off the line with Richie and goes back to sleep he’ll slip into some even worse scenario. 

Richie doesn’t speak for a moment. Then he says in a soft tone of voice, “Do my words put you to sleep, Eds?”

“If you’re talking about something boring, yes.”

“Okay,” Richie says. “Things Eddie would not be interested in at all.” He pauses again. “Do you know the plot of Game of Thrones?” 

“I haven’t read it or seen the show because I’m completely disinterested by it.”

“Okay perfect. Get comfy and gather close to attend to the story of the game of thrones, where you win or you die.”

Eddie nestles back into his pillows and puts his phone on speaker, resting it next to his ear. 

“All settled?” Richie asks. Eddie nods, then remembers Richie can’t see him through the phone. “I’m snug,” he says.

“Okay, so we start out in Winterfell,” Richie begins. “Wait no, technically we start out beyond the wall. So these members of the Night’s Watch are patrolling beyond the Wall, just chilling and having a nice little fire. And then all these fucking wights, they just come out of nowhere . . .”

Eddie feels himself being pulled under. Richie’s voice is soothing, a little scratchy coming out of the phone’s speaker but still deep. Almost without meaning to, Eddie drifts off. 

\---

Eddie’s alarm goes off at 8 am and he hits snooze on it for the next hour. Unfortunately, this morning he’s both hungover and sleep deprived. And his phone battery is depleted from lying next to his face all night. 

He checks his call log. Richie had stayed on the line for thirty minutes with him last, just talking to him, even though he was getting no response. Just to help Eddie go to sleep.

He plugs his phone back in, shower, and gathers this things before checking out of the hotel. He grabs one last coffee from his little cafe, picking up a banana oat muffin and a bottle of water as well. His head hurts and he knows drinking caffeine will just dehydrate him but if he doesn’t he’ll have a caffeine withdrawal headache and that will be even worse.

He hails a taxi and heads back out of Midtown towards LaGuardia. He focuses on settling his stomach, alternating between the water and the coffee. He’s really too old to drink that much, especially that much hard alcohol. 

The airport is crowded and he crawls his way through security. Once he gets through, he doesn’t have much time before his flight leaves, so he just goes straight to his gate. He let himself sleep in later than he should, but his body needed the rest.

When he makes his way into his seat he once more considers his bottle of Xanax. He doesn’t take one. 

Richie texts him while he’s still waiting for the plane

_did u sleep through the rest of the night okay?_

**Yeah, I did. Thanks for helping.**

_of course, glad it worked_

_ill be there to get u when u land_

**See you soon,** says Eddie and shuts his phone off. 

Flying above the middle of the country he thinks over his trip. Somehow, despite the fact he had been three thousand miles away the whole time, Richie dominates his recollections. He doesn’t know why he’d been so weird yesterday, but Eddie’s positive he hadn’t done anything differently yesterday from the day before. Maybe Richie had just had a bad day. 

He decides he needs to tell him. Not just because he finally believes there’s a chance Richie might feel the way but because he deserves to try, for himself. Brave isn’t something you are; it’s a choice, made over and over again in little ways and big ways. Bill was right and Myra was right; he deserves to go after his own happiness.  
Unable to sleep, he stares out the window at the clouds below for the rest of the flight, thinking over what he wants to say and how he wants to say it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I struggled a lot with how to write Myra. Since starting this fic I've read a bunch of analyses and theories about Myra's behavior and their relationship, and I don't think there's one correct interpretation. This fic is so much about people's capacity to change their behavior and their lives, and I wanted to explore that not just for Eddie but the people around him too. In the next chapter Eddie shares a little more deeply about how he feels about the encounter; I wanted to wait to give his side until he could tell it to Richie. If you have thoughts, please come talk to me at [@beepbeepbxtch](https://twitter.com/beepbeepbxtch) or [toziertool](https://toziertool.tumblr.com/)
> 
> It was so much fun to write Eddie's New York adventures, especially while I've been stuck in quarantine. The first thing I do when I go out is re-create his expeditions. You can check out more about [Bryant Park Cafe](https://bryantpark.org/shop-eat/bryant-park-grill-cafe), [Katz's Deli](https://katzsdelicatessen.com/), [the Library](https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-library-new-york), [Carbone](https://carbonenewyork.com/), and [Julius'](https://www.juliusbarny.com/) at any of the links above.
> 
> As always, thanks for reading and commenting :)


	11. backslidin', how do you do?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mike arrives; Eddie overthinks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from 'Slippery People'

Eddie’s plane makes it back to LA without incident. He texts Richie when he lands, and Richie sends him back a thumbs up. He walks out of the airport, and looks for Richie’s flashy red car. Soon enough, Richie pulls up. He pops the trunk and Eddie goes around back to throw his suitcase in. Coming back around, he slides into the passenger's seat. 

Richie grins at him. “Spaghetti has landed!”

Eddie smiles back despite the nickname. “Let's get out of here, if I have to be in enclosed space for too much longer I’m going to start pounding on the ceiling.”

“Speedy getaway, got it,” Richie says, pulling away.

Richie puts on the Beach Boys and says, “Some California tunes for the returning California king.” ‘Good Vibrations’ fills the car as Richie pulls onto the highway. They’re going too fast to put the top down on, but Eddie wishes he could get a little bit of sunlight on his skin. New York in the winter truly is brutal, and he didn’t think he’d be able to shake the feeling of the cold until he drew in some light.

It seems like Richie has gotten over whatever was bugging him yesterday. Their conversation on the ride back is light and easy, filled with bickering about whether or not Frontier or Spirit was the worst airline.

“The only reason you think Frontier is worse is because Spirit is so bad you’ve never even been on it,” Eddie insists.

They pull up to Richie’s house and Richie hops out to grab Eddie’s bag from the back. He pulls it from the trunk and Eddie heads into the house, following him. “Home sweet home,” says Richie, flinging the door wide open. “The old girl missed you; she’s been accumulating three days worth of dust.”

‘Did you miss me?’ Eddie thinks. He doesn’t say that out loud, instead depositing his luggage into the entryway and making his way to the kitchen. 

Richie is already standing in front of the fridge. “Want a drink?” he calls out over his shoulder.

“No thanks,” Eddie says. “I think I’m all drunk out for a bit.”

“So we’re considering the New York trip a success?” Richie says, grabbing a beer for himself. 

“In pretty much every respect, yeah,” Eddie says. “The divorce isn’t finalized yet but at least we’re close. And I don’t have to live in fear in Myra anymore.” He makes his way to the kitchen counter and takes a seat.

“Yeah, crazy she seems to have become a rational human. You sure she’s still the same person?”

“It’s not like she’s become completely different. I’m not particularly interested in being her friend, or communicating with her at all beyond what’s necessary. The reasons we were incompatible are still there, now she’s just making an effort to be better. And even though I can still be upset at the way she treated me I don’t want to fault her for trying to improve.”

“Do you forgive her?” Richie asks, taking a seat at the counter across from Eddie. He glances down. “Shit, let me get you water,” he says, getting up. He grabs the pitcher from the fridge and pours Eddie a glass. Richie’s perfectly content to drink tap water but it freaks Eddie out health wise, so he’s gotten a filter about a week after he moved in. Richie refuses to use it on principle, claiming it strengthens his immune system to drink tap water. Richie comes back to the counter and deposits the glass in front of Eddie. 

“I don’t know if I forgive her,” Eddie says, taking a grateful sip. “She wasn’t a healthy partner. She never hit me, but my mom never hit me either. Myra enabled all my hypochondria and my anxieties, she pressured me into taking medication I didn't need, she made every issue in her life into an enormous problem for me so I wouldn't be able to focus on my own shit and deal with it. But that still doesn’t make her a monster. I know in Derry things were clear cut; Pennywise was evil, Bowers was evil. But I have to believe Derry isn’t the whole world, and that people are more complicated than Pennywise. Some people in Derry were horrible beyond belief, but they were being influenced by a supernatural entity. I want to think that there aren’t good people or bad people; just people, trying to make the best with what they’re given. While we were married Myra did a terrible job and her actions were wrong but she doesn’t have to be defined by those actions forever.”

“What about Bev’s ex husband?” Richie asks, taking a swig of beer.

“Oh, that guy’s a straight piece of shit,” Eddie says. “There has to be some kind of outlier.”

“You’re a much kinder person than I am. I would never forgive her. I don’t think I am ever going to forgive her. On your behalf, you know,” he says, responding to Eddie’s look. “‘I do not have a gentle heart,’” he says in a Voice that Eddie doesn’t recognize. He pauses. “Wait, I don’t think we got to that part of _Game of Thrones_.”

“Even if we had got there I have no memory of the plot,” Eddie says. “That’s why it effectively knocked me out.”

“Can’t help that I have the smoothest set of pipes south of San Francisco. Could lull a cobra to sleep,” Richie says. “Hey, you hungry?”

It’s only around five pm but Eddie’s body is three hours ahead. “Yeah, food would be great.”

Richie orders Indian, and Eddie grabs his luggage from the entryway to go back to his room to shower and change his clothes. He stands under the hot water long after he’s finished washing himself, letting it stream over him. He thinks about how happy Richie seems to have him back, the uptick Eddie feels in his own energy from being around Richie. He changes into the pants he owns that are the closest to pajamas and emerges from his room, hair damp from the shower. Richie is setting the food out on the counter. 

“Did you tell them mild this time?” Eddie asks. “Because last time you said ‘not spicy’ and those are different things.”

“You can’t blame me because you like boring food. But yes, I made sure you got your under seasoned chicken.”

They set up the table and spread out the food. Richie tells him about some flower mart that’s happening tomorrow, asking Eddie if he wants to go. That seems like the perfect antidote to ridding himself of the grey of New York, so Eddie readily agrees. “I thought we could maybe do a flower/flower combo,” Richie says. In response to Eddie’s confused expression he says, “I picked up some weed too. In case you want to get high to look at a bunch of pretty colors.”

“I think the first time I get high in thirty years should be in the safety of a house where I have a bed I can collapse into if I get too stoned. Definitely not in an overstimulating crowd.”

“I knew you'd shoot me down but you can’t fault a man for trying. You gotta crush all my best plans. Shit, you know what would be even better? Dropping acid for the flower mart, now that’s a great fucking idea.”

“Let me work up to that level of wild. Actually, I don’t think I’ll ever be at that level of wild.”

“Slippery slope, baby. Nancy Regan warned us about it.”

It feels so nice, being back with Richie. They shouldn’t have much to talk about but more always springs up. Throughout dinner, Eddie thinks about the conversation he wants to have. Being back in Richie’s home feels right in a way that being in New York didn’t. He wants this life and he’s tired of being scared. He looks at Richie over the light of the table, while the other man is telling him about the Whole Foods clerk who was trying to convince him there was a different caffeine value to different roasts, and even though Eddie knows Richie is wrong about the coffee thing, he feels like his face is practically trembling with how much he loves him. How he feels about him must be shining out of every pore; he has no idea how Richie doesn’t notice. He’s determined to share the truth, but not tonight. He wants to breathe in this moment, hold it close to him, just in case things go wrong.

They clean up side by side after dinner, and settle down on the couch. " _Office_?” Richie asks, plopping down the couch. “Yes please,” Eddie says, stretching back. He missed Richie’s couch, the joy of sinking down into his little spot next to Richie.

“We’re close to the end, you know,” Richie says, queuing up the episode. “Gotta find another show.”

“I’ll pick something; I don’t trust your taste.”

“I’m a professional comedian, Eds; no one knows funny like me.” 

“There will be a deep vetting process for whatever we watch next.”

Richie plays the episode of _The Office_ and Eddie curls into the couch. He finds himself laughing easily, glancing over at Richie’s face in the light of the TV.

Richie pauses before Netflix autoplays into the next episode. “So, I thought I should give you an update. Before we head to bed for the night,” he says casually. “I didn’t have any Deadlights dreams while you were gone. No nightmares at all. So you don’t have to keep sleeping in the same bed as me; you can get back to your regular cycle, no need for me to fuck up your rhythm anymore.”

Eddie doesn’t say, ‘Two nights is not a valid sample size.’ He doesn’t say, ‘But I have nightmares too.’ He doesn’t say, ‘Do you not want me there? Did you never want me there?’ Instead he just lets the rock he feels like he swallowed settle in his stomach.

“I’m glad the dreams aren’t a problem anymore,” he says. “That must be a relief.”

“I guess my brain just needed a hard reset or something. Since I resolved those Deadlights fears, you know, don’t have to keep ruminating on that. Thanks a lot for helping, I really appreciate it.”

“No problem,” says Eddie, tongue thick in his throat. “I’m sure you want to go back to working at night too.”

“Yeah, it’s a pretty productive time for me. I think I’m mostly done writing new material now though; the next thing is planning the big comeback tour."

“So you’ll be going on the road?” Eddie says.

“Not soon, but at some point. Don’t worry,” he says, completely misreading the look on Eddie’s face. “You can still stay here while I’m gone, I’m not going to kick you to the street.” 

‘You’re kicking me to the street right now!’ Eddie wants to scream. He knows he shouldn’t feel rejected just because Richie wants his bed to himself again. He should be grateful that Richie’s sleeping through the night. And it’s not like he hadn’t helped with that. Richie just doesn’t need his help anymore. 

“Thanks man, appreciate that,” he says.

“Want to watch another episode?” Richie asks, gesturing at the TV. 

“Sounds good,” says Eddie. It does not sound good. None of this sounds good. 

He barely pays attention to the TV. He hopes Richie chalks up his lack of laughter to the fact _The Office_ isn’t as funny after Michael Scott leaves. 

The episode ends, and Eddie gets up from the couch. “I’m going to bed,” he tells Richie. “I know it’s early here and I should stay up to reset my internal body clock but I’m so goddamn tired all I want to do is pass out.”

“Get you beauty sleep,” Richie says. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

As Eddie goes down the hallway to his room he’s infinitely grateful he didn’t store his toiletries in Richie’s bedroom. He’s never done a walk of shame, but he imagines the feeling would be similar to how it would feel to grab his robe and toothpaste out of Richie’s room to return it to his own, slouching down the hallway with his belongings clutched to his chest.

He gets to his room and sits down on the edge of the bed. He could’ve watched another episode of TV; he was tired but not exhausted. He just didn’t want to be there anymore.

‘This is a good thing,’ he tells himself again. ‘Mike was just telling you this wasn’t a permanent solution to his nightmares. But now the problem is solved, and things can go back to normal.’

But Eddie didn’t want normal anymore. He’d been willing to throw a firecracker into his and Richie’s relationship, set things off just because the result could be staggeringly beautiful. But Richie’s decision had reminded him of the dangers of lighting explosives and sending them into the world. Because sometimes they just blew up in your face and you were left with burned hands and the scattered apart remnants of the best part of your life.

He wants to take another shower purely out of sadness but that seems self indulgent. So instead he just pulls back the covers and gets into bed. 

It’s too quiet. When he was in New York it was easier to ignore the fact that Richie wasn’t with him because there were car alarms going off and ambulances wailing, construction starting in the early morning. It’s different being back in Richie’s house, where he’d subconsciously primed himself to be lulled to sleep by the gentle rustling sounds Richie makes as he settles down for the night. He didn’t know how much he’d been looking forward to getting to share a bed with Richie again until the opportunity was removed from him. It feels so much lonelier now, stretching out on his own in a too big bed.

He thinks about Richie leaving to go on tour. He’ll pack up his stuff and go from city to city, a different crowd to interact with every night. People coming up to him, congratulating him on how funny he is, which they should because he’s really fucking funny, but he’s not as funny to anyone in the world as he is to Eddie. And Eddie will just be sitting at home in an empty house that doesn’t belong to him. 

He can’t tell him. He knows he’s being a coward, so quickly faltering in his resolution to make the brave choice. But now that he’s had a taste of rejection from Richie he doesn’t want more, doesn’t want to have to actually perform that walk of shame with all of his meager belongings out of Richie’s house. What would be the point of putting himself out there knowing he would get shut down? Eddie could over-analyze things as much as he wanted to but this he couldn’t interpret differently other than that sharing a sleeping space had truly just been a comfort thing for Richie. Eddie has served his purpose and Richie didn’t need to adjust to an auxiliary person in his bed anymore. 

Part of Eddie hopes that Richie will change his mind, come crawl into be with him like they did when they were kids. Because he wants to be there, with him, sharing the same space whether or not they’re awake. Eventually, Eddie falls asleep with his face still turned to the door.

\-----

There’s nothing wrong with the rest of the weekend. He and Richie go to the flower mart on Saturday, and pick up some plants and fresh blooms for the house. They go out for dinner the next night, trying some Spanish tapas place Richie read about. They argue and laugh like always, going on endlessly if the little twist ties or the plastic tabs were superior for storing loaves of bread.

But Eddie holds himself back. He doesn’t snap a picture of Richie standing next to a sunflower as tall as he is. He doesn’t steal food off of Richie’s plate. He keeps to the corner of the couch, never settling down next to Richie or unnecessarily reaching his limbs out. He’s conscious of every time he makes an action that could be misinterpreted. 

Richie seems the same as always. Maybe a little less touchy, but Eddie’s shying away from it anytime he senses it coming anyway. But he still tries to ruffle his hair, and wolf whistles when he comes in from a run in his still too small shorts.

At work on Monday Eddie gets a text from Mike.

_I have a plan for my LA trip. Can I run it by you?_

**Sure,** Eddie responds. **I’ll call you on my lunch break.**

In about an hour he goes outside to the little courtyard with tables his office set up so employees couldn’t be continually stuck inside during the work day. There’s a couple of people scattered around eating lunch, but they’re all far enough away Eddie doesn’t have any concerns about this conversation being overheard. There’s nothing particularly salacious he has to say, but even though he likes his co-workers he wants to be selective about the information he reveals about his personal life.

He pulls out his phone and dials Mike. Mike picks up on the third ring. “Hey Eddie,” he says. “Thanks for calling.”

“Of course,” Eddie responds. “What’s your plan?”

“Well, I was checking out the dates, and I think I could swing it so I’m in town for Richie’s birthday.”

“Oh shit, I forgot that was coming up,” Eddie says. He used to know Richie’s birthday by heart. Every year Richie’s parents would throw a party just for the Losers, setting up their backyard, putting out little obstacle courses when they were younger, getting a chocolate cake every year. Eddie would present Richie with a comic he knew he wanted, or the band poster he’d been looking at in the record store. Once he’d given him the ugliest Hawaiian shirt possibly imaginable that he’d happened on at a Goodwill. Okay, maybe he went searching. He’s continually baffled how he didn’t realize he had an enormous gay crush on his best friend.

“Yeah, he’d love that,” Eddie says. “We could get together with Bill, do a dinner. Fuck, I have to figure out what to get him.”

“I need to get him a present too,” Mike says. “I think I’m going to scour for something on the road. He deserves a truly bizarre souvenir.”

“He’ll love you forever if you get him a mounted jackalope head,” Eddie says. “But I think you just being here will be enough of a present for him.”

“I think if Richie wants any person as a present it would be you,” Mike says it like a joke, but Eddie doesn’t respond. Mike continues, “Have you talked to him?”

Eddie closes his eyes. “Not really going down that path anymore. He said he didn't have any Deadlights dreams while I was gone so there’s no need to sleep in the same bed. It was always intended to be a temporary solution to his nightmares, not a thing we would do forever, or something he wanted. Which should have been obvious to me in the first place. So I just did a bunch of misinterpreting for nothing. Which is fine, I was glad I was able to help him, and now I know it was nothing more than that.”

“Eddie, I don’t think-”

“That’s all there is,” Eddie says firmly. “I’m not going to disrupt my existence here just because my favorite conspiracy theorist friend thinks there’s something more to my relationship with my roommate.”

“It’s your life,” Mike says. “You can do whatever you want with it.”

“Just-don’t say anything to him,” Eddie says. “I think at this point it would just make things weird.”

“Okay. I love you, you know.”

“I love you too, and I’m glad that I’m seeing you soon.”

They hang up and Eddie digs into the salad he brought for lunch. He really should be getting better sleep on his own without someone else disturbing his circadian rhythms. It had only been a couple of nights; he's sure his body just needed to adjust and then he would sleep even more soundly than he had before. Richie probably slept better alone, enjoying the extra space to kick out his stupid long legs.

Eddie half finishes his salad and throws the rest away. 

\----

When he gets home Richie is facetimeing with Mike. He beams widely and gestures Eddie closer when he comes in. “Have you heard the good news? Mikey is officially ditching the sunshine state for la la land.”

“Eddie knows,” Mike says. “Eddie also knows I’ll be there by March 7th.”

It takes a second for Richie to put it together and then he practically bounds out of his seat. “Micycle, are you coming for the celebration of my birth? For little old me? All the way across the country, braving the elements and the crazy characters all along the way, just to be with the most important person in your life on the most important day of the year?”

“I’ve remembered your birthday for the past twenty seven years without anyone to celebrate it with. I’d be an idiot not to come.”

Eddie goes to the fridge and grabs the bottle of wine Richie had picked up from the grocery store this morning. “Beer?” he calls out over his shoulder.

“My angel,” Richie responds, and Eddie roots around for one of the Lagunitas he knows Richie keeps in there. He pours himself a glass of sauvignon blanc, pops the top on Richie’s beer, and joins him in front of his phone screen. 

“Cheers,” Richie says, picking up his glass and raising it towards the screen. Mike puts his blended cocktail close to the camera and Eddie adds his wine glass. They all do a little clinking gesture together. 

“To Mike’s cross country road trip,” Richie says. “May he discover the weirdest pockets of society this country has to offer.”

“It might be fun to look into the bizarre without it being supernatural,” Mike says.

“I wouldn’t poke too close if I were you,” Eddie says. “You might not like what you turn up. And I don’t have it in me to defeat another demonic entity.”

“No seeking out monsters,” Mike says. “I just won’t run away if something picks a fight with me, that’s all. I feel plenty prepared.”

“Yeah, we didn’t get killed the first time, why not just fling ourselves into the jaws of death over and over?” say Richie

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Where do you want to go on the way?” Eddie asks.

Mike launches into his plan to make a pit stop in New Orleans, and they spend the next several drinks debating the merits of cutting through Austin or Dallas. Mike hangs up eventually, citing the time difference, and Eddie sets down to making food for the night. Richie peppers in commentary on his cooking but Eddie has a very distinct plan for how he wants to spice the paella, something he’s never tried to make before, and won’t let him actually help.

“What do you want to do for your birthday?” he asks Richie over dinner.

“Shouldn’t you know that?” Richie says. “I mean, as the other half of my soul you’re supposed to know me better than you know yourself.” 

Eddie does his best to brush that one off. “It’s unrealistic to expect people to read your mind and do exactly what you want them to do. Humans need guidance.”

“You’ve always had the soul of a true romantic,” Richie says. “Let me brainstorm, okay? Right off the bat, thinking sushi served off a naked dude.”

“You know how I feel about raw fish.”

“That’s your issue? Not eating food off of someone’s body?”

“Not necessarily opposed to that under the right circumstances,” Eddie says without thinking. He doesn’t realize what’s coming out of his mouth until Richie doesn’t respond. When Eddie looks over he sees Richie is intently cutting his food.

Eddie flushes. He’d been working so hard on not saying anything inappropriate.

“Actually, I’ll take charge of planning this,” he says, switching tracks. “I don’t trust you not to take us laser tagging.”

“Are you kidding me, that would be fucking sweet!”

“I’m not letting you annihilate a bunch of children just because you think it’s funny. No, leave it to me.” 

That night he lay in bed and thought about Richie’s previous birthdays, the ones he’d missed. Spent alone in apartments in Chicago and LA, hotel rooms on the road. It wasn’t like Eddie had had any particularly good birthdays (this year included; it was right before he left Myra, and the high point had been when Richie called him and immediately launched into a breathy rendition of ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. President’) but he wanted to provide a good one for Richie to make up for all the ones he couldn’t be there for. He didn’t know where in the world he’d be in a year; hopefully he’d be lucky enough to still be with Richie but there were no certainties. He had to make this birthday count. 

He’s not been miserable during this time with Richie, exactly. Interactions just don’t come as easily when he has to constantly think about checking himself. He’s extra aware of when he looks too long; Richie’s probably finding it weird that Eddie avoids eye contact with him, instead of looking distantly off over his shoulder. He’s not unhappy, he’s just less happy than he was before he went to New York. Which is still way happier than he was when he left New York the first time so he should be grateful. He just has a constant twitching under his skin, and he feels like he’s always either too hot or too cold. But he can live with this. He’s lived with worse.  
Instead of falling asleep he plots what he could do for Richie to somehow make up for twenty years of loss. 

\----

Bill does claim the rights to hosting Mike, which Richie pouts about. He still prepares the house for his arrival, helping Eddie to clean and stock up their fridge with anything Mike might want. Mike swings by Bill’s to pick him up on his way into town before heading to Richie’s. When they hear the doorbell ring Richie bounds from the couch, Eddie following more sedately behind. Richie flings open the door, and there’s Mike, still in his Florida uniform of shorts and a linen button down. Bill is standing behind him, smiling. 

Richie pulls Mike into a hug. “The one and only hermit historian of my heart, alligator wrangler, and owner of the strongest pair of shoulders LA has ever seen. We’re just tickled pink to have you in our great city.”

“Out of the way,” says Eddie, elbowing past Richie. He pulls Mike into a hug. “Glad to have you here, come on in.”

“Yes, welcome to the Tozier-Kaspbrak household,” Richie says, stepping aside. Eddie notes the joining of their names, like this is Eddie’s house too, not just the place where he’s living. Richie links his arm through Mike’s and pulls him deeper into the house. “The tour is boring so let's go straight to the booze,” he says, leading him towards the living room.

Eddie stays behind to hug Bill. “We’ve got a Losers Club majority here,” he says. “Four out of the seven.”

Neither of them acknowledge that they’ll never be a complete set again, that they’ll never have the lucky seven gathered in one place together, at least not in this  
realm. Eddie isn’t sure if there’s an afterlife or not but he had to believe that after all they’d been through one day they’d be reunited. 

“I’m sure we can lure Bev and Ben here,” Bill responds, moving deeper into the house.

Richie’s deposited Mike on a stool at the counter while he whips him up a cocktail. “Are you sick of Florida boat drinks or are you hooked now?”

“Hooked; something sweet please,” says Mike.

“Whiskey drink for the writer?” Richie asks Bill. 

“That would be great,” Bill says, sliding next to Mike. 

Richie turns to Eddie, who shakes his head no. “I have work tomorrow, he says. Richie shrugs, and grabs a beer for himself.

“How was the journey?” Eddie asks.

“Man, you would not believe the jambalaya I had in New Orleans, that might be the greatest food city in America, or at least out of the ones I've been to. And I went to the Texas Stonehenge; it’s crazy, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

They head to the living room to listen to Mike continue his stories, and barrage him with questions about his travels. At some point, Eddie gets up to start making dinner, and Richie follows him.

“I can help,” he says, gesturing at the ingredients Eddie has begun to lay out on the counter. 

“Don’t worry, I have a plan,” Eddie says, grabbing the apron Richie had gotten him that read ‘I turn grills on.’ Eddie grumbled about it but secretly found it funny.

“You need a sous chef, don’t you?” Richie says. “Besides, they’ve started talking about Bill’s book, and there’s only so much I can take of literary discourse.”

“You better actually help,” warns Eddie. “And don’t forget to wash your hands!”

Eddie and Richie set about making dinner, Richie dicing the peppers and Eddie seasoning the meat. Eventually Bill and Mike wander over, drawn by the smell of roasting chicken. They help set out the table; Richie even rustles up a few candles to light. They sit down around the table and Bill raises his glass.

“To the Losers club,” he says. 

“Losers forever,” Richie chimes in. They all clink glasses together and take a sip.

Over dinner they keep talking about Mike’s trip. They place bets on the question of when Bev and Ben are going to get engaged. Eddie says Ben will pop the question in a year, Bill says six months. Richie bets that Bev will actually be the one to propose to him. 

They finish up the meal and Eddie carries the plates to the kitchen. He wants to just deposit them in the sink but he can’t help but rinse them. 

When he comes back Mike and Bill are gathering their things. “I still have to get Mike installed in the guest bedroom,” Bill says. 

“We’ll see you tomorrow though, right?” Eddie asks.

“You think we can fucking get rid of these guys? Dream on,” Richie says. He starts walking with Mike toward the door. “We gotta go to the Los Angeles Central Library, the ceiling will blow your mind . . .”. They disappear from view. Bill moves to follow them but Eddie holds him back.

“Hey,” he says. “I’m coming up with a plan for Richie’s birthday and I want your help setting up. I’ll need Mike to be the distraction too.”

“I’ll run it by him. I’m sure he’s in. Can I bring Audra?” he asks. “One of the things we’re working on is including the other more in each other's lives, and I think she’d like to be here.”

“If you think she’ll be okay with Richie’s brand of humor, then go for it,” Eddie says. “I’m not going to censor the man on his birthday.”

Bill gives Eddie a look. “So you want to do something special for Richie’s birthday?”

“Don’t,” Eddie says tersely, and immediately feels bad. He can’t keep getting upset with his friends because he can’t control his adolescent longing. “Sorry, it’s just really not like that for him, I came to terms with that already, and I’m trying to make the best of it and I know I just keep making it harder for myself but it’s my life to make terrible decisions.”

“I don’t give a shit what it’s like for him. Eddie, you’re so fucking brave, you know that, right? I’m sorry for any time I made you feel like you weren’t.”

Eddie stares at him. They’d never really talked about the house on Neibolt when Eddie had frozen in front of the Stan spider.

“And you can do anything,” Bill continues. 

“Bill, you coming?” Mike calls out. 

Eddie just continues to look at him. Bill claps him on the shoulder and moves past him, joining Richie and Mike by the entryway.

They all hug and make plans to meet up tomorrow. He and Richie clean up the kitchen and the table before saying goodnight to each other and going off into their separate bedrooms. 

Once in bed Eddie can’t sleep. He feels his own cowardice, his inability to be honest with Richie, weigh down on him. At dinner the whole night he had wondered if Mike and Bill’s eyes were glancing between him and Richie whenever they went back and forth for too long. He’d spread out his secret and it was only inevitable that someone would tell him eventually, or that he’d figure it out on his own. Richie’s birthday could be an opportunity to try and show him how he felt, test the waters in a way that put the ball in Richie’s court. Make enough of a gesture to communicate something. 

\----

Over the next week they take Mike to all the tourist spots Eddie didn’t bother visiting when he first moved to LA. They go to Santa Monica Pier, and Mike has to admit the west coast beaches may be superior. They avoid the walk of fame but make it up to the Griffith Observatory to gaze down at the city at night. Richie tries to get Mike and Bill to smoke with them on the back porch, but they luckily refuse, claiming they’re done with mind altering substances for a while. Eddie is grateful; he doesn’t think he could be high around Richie right now.

The entire trip Eddie is hyper-conscious of any extra attention Bill and Mike might be giving him. He’s terrified of them giving something away, of revealing to Richie what he’s not ready to tell. He tries to interact with Richie as little as possible, playing it off by focusing his attention on the visiting Mike.

On Richie’s birthday Eddie wakes up at his normal time, knowing Richie won’t be up yet. He plans on just leaving him a note on his way to the office. To his surprise, Richie is sitting in the kitchen with a cup of coffee in front of him. “Morning, Spagheds,” he says. “There’s still coffee for you in the French press.”

“What the fuck,” Eddie says. “It’s your birthday, I’m supposed to be doing nice things for you.”

“You are doing something nice for me,” Richie says. “You’re providing me with the first face I see on this, the morning of my forty first year. What a way to start things off.”

Eddie goes to pour himself some coffee. “You’re so full of shit,” he calls out over his shoulder. “Happy birthday,” he adds after a second.

“Thanks. And you got me; I have a meeting with my producers about filming the tour for Netflix. Work doesn’t stop just because we should all be celebrating me.”

“There will be plenty of celebrating you later,” Eddie says, sitting next to Richie. “It’s probably a good thing you have to labor like the rest of us for once.”

“You can’t be mean to me on my birthday,” Richie says.

“Oh, you wanna see mean? We’re not anywhere close to mean,” Eddie responds. 

While Eddie gets breakfast together Richie fills Eddie in on what he, Mike, and Bill are going to do around LA after his meeting. Eddie knows what Richie does not; that Bill’s saying he needs to meet Audra at some point is just an excuse to come to Richie’s and help Eddie set up. 

At work Eddie thinks through the last details of his not-party party (it’s not really a party if there are only five attendees). He hurries home after he’s done, cursing at too slow cars. Bill gets there about five minutes after he does, bringing with him extra supplies. Eddie starts out the kitchen pulling dinner together before placing the dish in the oven to cook. They go through Richie’s house, hiding gifts in the places Eddie picked over the past week. They write out a series of clues, which Eddie mostly leaves to Bill since he’s the author. He comes up with the last one himself, overthinking it the whole time. They’re in the middle of putting string lights out on the deck when the doorbell rings. “That’ll be Audra,” Bill says. “I asked her to pick up the cake.” He goes to the door into the house and Eddie follows him.

Eddie hurries in front of him to get the door. He opens it on a red haired woman holding a box. Audra is beautiful, although Eddie does notice she bears more than a passing resemblance to Bev. 

“You must be Eddie,” she says. Bill comes up behind her and takes the cake box from her hands. “They gave me some weird looks at the bakery when I went to pick that up,” Audra says. 

The top of the cake has loopy white frosting that reads ‘Happy Birthday, Trashmouth.’ Eddie hadn’t been able to replicate the exact cake Maggie Tozier would bake but he’d tried to find the best chocolate cake in Los Angeles. He ushers Audra out to the back porch and they put the finishing touches on the decorations, Eddie pulling the food out of the oven and setting it out.

Soon enough they hear the door open and they congregate by the front. Richie comes in, followed by Mike. He stops when he sees them all assembled. “This feels more like an intervention than a birthday celebration. Weren’t you all going to meet us at the restaurant?” he says.

“Yeah, that was all a decoy,” Mike says. 

Richie looks at all of them in confusion.

“Here,” Eddie says, placing a note card in his hands. Richie looks at it. “'What girls who want to attract boys like Mick Jagger brush their teeth with,'” he reads out loud. He looks up at them, still seeming a little bemused. “What the fuck?” he says.

“It’s a scavenger hunt,” Eddie says. 

“It’s a present scavenger hunt,” Bill clarifies. 

A grin spreads across Richie’s face. “You guys got me presents?”

“Of course we got you presents, dumbass,” Eddie says. “It’s your birthday.”

Richie smiles at just him, before he snaps to attention “Okay, I’ve got this,” Richie says, turning back to the clue. “Low-balling me at first, I see.” He goes to the liquor cabinet and checks it. “Nope, I recognize all of these.” Then, he goes to the kitchen and rummages through the cabinets. Finding nothing, he frowns, then goes down the hallway to the bathroom. They all follow him expectantly. “Are you gonna be my flock of ducklings this whole time?”

“We’ve got bets riding on how well you’ll do,” Mike says.

“Anyone who didn’t believe I’d figure out every clue out owes me ten bucks.”

Richie goes into the bathroom and digs around, eventually opening the cabinet under the sink. He triumphantly pulls out a bottle of whiskey with another note card attached to the front. 

“That’s from me,” Audra says. “I know it’s boring, but Bill said you liked whiskey, and I figured I should contribute.”

Richie looks at the bottle admiringly. “It’s not a bottle of Jack, but this is way better so I don’t give a shit if your clue isn’t accurate,” he says. He pulls the note card off. “‘Like a spiderweb, put me in your room and I’ll keep the nighttime flies away.’”

Richie hands the bottle of Bill to whiskey, who sighs but takes it from him. They all move out of the way as Richie pushes past. “Bedroom,” he says. “Obviously. Bunch of pervs, poking around my room. Hope you didn’t look in any of the drawers; that’s where I keep the really weird sex toys.”

They follow him down the hallway. He heads to his bedroom door and scans the room. Eventually, he goes over to the window. He fingers the dream catcher they’d hung there.

“It was the ugliest thing I could find in the entire Southwest of the United States,” Mike says.

“Not done appropriating from Native Americans, I see,” Richie says. “Trying to help me sleep better?”

“There’s weirder things in this world than dream catchers being effective,” Mike says. “Maybe this one’s ugliness gives it extra power.”

“Gazebos work sometimes,” Eddie adds. 

Richie walks over and hugs Mike. “Thanks,” he says. “For finding something even more garish and offensive than me.” He goes to the clue taped to the window. “‘I’ve changed in the past thirty years and so have you, but some things never change. Find me between paper and plaster.’”

Richie goes around the house for a while, until he turns on Bill. “You gotta give me a hint,” he says. “Not fair to make a man think this hard on his day of birth.”

“Sometimes paper isn’t just paper,” Bill says.

“Still cryptic,” Richie mutters. Then his face lights up. He hurries to the living room, and their little group follows him. Richie scans the top of the tall bookshelves until he sees a wrapped cardboard box. “You guys broke out the step ladder for this one, huh?” he says, reaching his long arms up over the top. Pulling it down, he tears the wrapping paper off and looks at them in confusion. “Do you really think I’m juvenile enough to want a Playstation for my birthday?”

“Look behind it,” Bill says. Richie reaches up once more and pokes around, emerging with a wrapped disc case, which he promptly also tears the wrapper off of. “You got me Street Fighter!” he says. “Fuck, I didn’t think they even still made these, and you got it for me!”

“I figured, I punched you in the face and you never got to punch me back,” Bill says. “We can even the score after 27 years.”

Richie gets up and hugs him. “I think that was evened out around the second time we defeated an alien space clown together,” he says. He glances at Audra. “You know, the metaphorical clown of our childhood traumas.” Eddie winces. Luckily the truth is crazy enough that it’s a cover in and of itself. 

“Still looking forward to kicking your ass in Street Fighter though,” Richie says. He pulls the final clue from the Street Fighter case. “‘You can’t claim me for yourself,’” he reads. “‘I must be bestowed.’” He looks up at Eddie. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means you’ll find out later,” Eddie says, moving to the patio. “Don’t you want your cake?”

They all follow Eddie to the deck. Bill and Eddie had set up a table with food and drinks. Richie goes over to the cake and peers at the top. 

“Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting,” Eddie says. “Wasn’t sure if it was still your favorite.”

Richie looks over at them. His eyes are a little wet. “You guys didn’t have to do this,” he says, walking back towards them. “Like, you could’ve just put a candle in a Ralphs’ cupcake and called it a day.”

“We wanted to do it,” Bill says. “We love you.”

“We do,” Mike adds.

“Yeah,” Eddie mumbles. He doesn’t want to chime in too loudly.

There’s a couple of stray tears rolling down Richie’s cheeks. He wipes them away with the back of his hand. He goes over and clumsily tries to wrap all three of them into a hug at once. Audra hangs back until Richie gestures at her and says, “You got me a gift, you’re part of this now.” She piles into the hug. It’s awkward and squished and wonderful; Eddie’s got his arm trapped somewhere between him and Mike, and he’s vaguely shoved up against Richie’s chest. Richie releases them eventually, no longer crying. 

“Missed opportunity to draw a frosting penis on the cake,” he says. “Then we’d all be eating dick."

Bill looks at Audra. “Sometimes the best thing to do is just ignore him,” he says. He moves towards the table and takes the lid off of one of the dishes. “We made mac and cheese for dinner,” Bill says. “It’s not exactly how your mom used to make it, but we tried our best to replicate it. We would’ve called if we had her number.”

Richie looks close to crying again, but he pulls himself together. “You guys really think I’m in a stage of arrested development, huh?”

“Adults like mac and cheese,” Eddie says.

“Eddie cooked it,” Bill adds. Eddie flushes. “There’s a specific way to make the roux, okay?” he says. “Now do you wanna try it?”

They gather around the table and dive into the mac and cheese. It’s decadent and indulgent and more dairy than Eddie usually would eat but he doesn’t care. They go to cut the cake and Facetime in Ben and Bev. Richie happily relates the scavenger hunt. “We’ll give you our presents the next time we see you in person,” Bev says.

“Are you going to be one of those couples who does everything together?” Richie asks. “Never show up to events alone, make a joint Facebook page?”

“No, we’re definitely not going to be that obnoxious,” Bev says. “Besides, we don’t want to cheat you out of a gift.”

“When will we see you next?” Eddie asks. 

“We were actually going to invite you all to Ben’s house in Nebraska. It’s beautiful, pretty much in the middle of nowhere, lots of space. Losers reunion.”

“It’s been too long since we’ve all been in the same place,” Ben adds. 

“And the circumstances of the last time were terrible,” Bev says. 

Eddie nods. There’s a palpable change in energy when they’re all gathered in the same space, the heightened connections between all of them playing off of each other. 

“I’m down to go,” Mike says. “I think I’m going to stick around California for a while.” He glances at Bill. “I’m not going to infringe on your hospitality the whole time; there are a couple of trips to different parks I want to take. Maybe drive north and go to Muir woods.”

“We’ll work out the details later,” Bev says. “Okay, Richie, be honest: who got you the best gift?”

“I can’t know that yet because Eddie refuses to explain the last fucking clue. I’m on the edge of my seat here.”

“You’ll get it eventually,” Eddie interjects. “Not my fault you can’t figure out the note card.”

“I’ll give you a full review of each after the man of mystery reveals my rightful belonging,” Richie promises.

“Wish I was there so I could shove your face in the cake,” Bev says.

“Wish you were here too, Molly,” Richie responds fondly.

They hang up and continue digging into the cake. They tell Audra, and Mike, who wasn’t part of their group then, about how for Richie’s eight birthday he got a new bicycle and promptly crashed it into a tree. His mother had tried to make him wear a helmet for years afterwards but he would always just stow it in the bushes once he was out of sight of his house.

They laugh and talk until it's dark outside and the back deck is illuminated by the gentle glow of the string lights. They break into the bottle of whiskey Audra bought Richie and Eddie even has a little sip.

“Did you meet anyone on the road, Mikey?” Richie asks, stretching out. “Knock boots with any southern belles? Get head from a glory whole?”

Mike actually looks a little flustered. “There were a couple of times, yes,” he says. “Not the glory whole part, but you meet some really engaging people on the road. It’s not like I did much dating in Derry; just another thing I missed out about the world that I’m trying to experience now.” 

“You gotta tell me all about it; my producers expect my set to be full of crazy sexual adventures and I have nothing of my own to offer.”

“You’re not seeing anyone?” Audra asks.

“Haven’t really dated anyone since Sandy and I broke up, and Sandy was just a very lovely beard. Definitely haven’t been seeing anyone for the past year,” Richie responds. 

“If you’re interested, I have a couple of friends I could set you up with,” Audra offers. 

Eddie stiffens. He knows Bill and Audra aren’t one of those couples who tell each other everything, and it seems like she’s not aware of Eddie’s feelings. Or she just has no tact. Eddie doesn’t really know her well enough to be certain.

“You know, why the fuck not,” Richie says. “I have to try and meet someone at some point, right? Gotta let the world have a piece of this,” he says, gesturing up and down himself. 

Eddie is sitting up very straight. He hopes, with everything he has, that neither Mike nor Bill look at him. Mike manages, Bill does not. Eddie resolutely doesn’t make eye contact with him. Bill looks away, and shifts towards Richie. 

“Have you figured out your tour schedule yet?” Bill asks.

“It’s up in the air whether I should ever show my face in Reno again or if not stopping there at all would be a bigger affront.”

Richie goes on and Eddie doesn’t know how to add to the conversation. This was confirmation of everything he’d always known to be true but hoped wasn’t. Richie wanted to start dating people. He wanted to put himself into the world in the way Eddie refused to. And why shouldn’t he? He had nothing holding him back. Richie might be the love of Eddie’s life but he wasn’t the love of Richie’s. He wasn’t sure if the love of your life really counted if it was unrequited but he was pretty sure he was never going to love anyone else like he was going to love Richie, so he didn’t know what else to call it. 

Eddie knows he’s being too quiet the rest of the evening but he doesn’t know what he can add to the conversation that won’t come out weird and stilted. Luckily, Bill and Mike pick up his slack, keeping them going with stories from childhood and relating high school experiences to Audra. She seems a little confused by their high jinks but laughs at a couple of moments.

It gets late, and Audra starts giving Bill looks. He picks up on them eventually and pushes his chair back. “We should get home,” he says. “I’m too old to stay out past midnight.”

“Abandoning me when it’s no longer my birthday, I see,” Richie says. “I understand, you need your old man rest.”

“You’re older than me,” Bill retorts.

“By like a month!” Richie says. He groans “Shit, now I’m going to have to do something really nice for you on your birthday.”

“You have a month to figure it out,” Bill says. He turns to Mike. “Ready?”

Mike nods, and they all get up from the table and head back into the house. They gather their things and say their goodbye, Richie hugging Bill and Mike extra tight. Richie watches them go until they get into Bill’s car. Eddie heads back to the porch. “I’m going to start cleaning up,” he yells.

“I’ll help,” Richie says, following him.

“Don’t you dare,” Eddie responds. “It’s your birthday. Go to bed.”

Despite Eddie’s protests Richie does help him clean up, putting the leftover mac and cheese away in the fridge and rinsing glasses in the sink. Eddie does an awkward little dance around him, rushing around with the plates and not making eye contact. All he wants to do is collapse into bed and not think about Richie dating people. 

They finish up eventually, and Eddie starts moving towards his bedroom. “Wait,” Richie calls after him. “Don’t I get my present?”

Eddie turns to face him. Richie looks happy, content under the light. Whatever Eddie is feeling in this moment, at least he gave Richie a good birthday.

“Wait here,” he says, and goes down to his bedroom. He grabs his wrapped package from underneath his bed. When he goes out the door of his room he finds Richie standing outside his door in the hallway. 

“The clue was impossible,” Eddie says. “You weren’t supposed to be able to figure it out.”

“Rude,” Richie says. “Goes against the principles of a scavenger hunt.”

“Needed to bring your ego down a peg,” Eddie says. He doesn’t tell him that he just didn’t want to give him his gift in front of Mike and Bill. A decision he’s regretting now, because it’s making it seems like a bigger deal than it is.

He thrusts the package at Richie. “Here,” he says. Richie tears through the wrapping paper which, to be fair to him, is just a plain purple one Eddie picked up because it was cheap and he knew Richie was going to do this anyway. Out emerges a cardboard box. He unfolds the lid and pulls out a little gold statue. Holding it out in front of himself, he examines the plaque.

“‘Best Motherfucker in the World,’” he reads. He looks more closely. “Wait, is this a bowler? Is this little guy tossing a bowling ball right now?”

“Yeah, they were all out of middle aged comedians,” Eddie says lightly. He wants this to seem casual, like a funny joke between friends. Because it is.

Richie looks up at him. “You finally acknowledging after all of these years that I’ve been fucking your mom?”

“It’s not that kind of motherfucker, jackass,” Eddie says, embarrassed. “It’s, you know, a term of endearment.”

Richie’s staring at him. His eyes look huge behind his glasses. Eddie’s terrified of what he might reveal just by looking at him, his secret welling up in his eyes with every second he doesn’t look away from Richie. 

“Happy Birthday, Rich,” Eddie says, and closes the door to his room. 

He goes over to his bed and sits on it. There’s a moment before he hears Richie’s footsteps go down the hallway. 

What did he think was going to happen? He made a feeble gesture at communicating how he feels, and he was glad he hadn’t made a more coherent one because he has to accept that Richie doesn’t feel the same way.

He gets ready for bed on autopilot. He tries not to think about anything as he brushes his teeth and showers. Once he gets into bed, however, he can’t stop ruminating on what Richie said earlier. How he wants to start meeting people. 

He doesn’t know how he can live here when Richie starts dating. He can’t insert a person like that into his life, someone who’ll drape themselves around Richie and cook him better meals than Eddie could. He can’t watch Richie fall in love with someone else.

He has to move out, find his own place. He’s clung onto this dream for too long, let himself get wrapped up in Richie. He needs to extract himself before he gets hurt any further. There’s no reason to keep submitting himself to the agonies of keeping a delicate series of boundaries up with Richie. Maybe it’s best to love him from afar. He let himself get in too deep, settle into a domestic dream that didn’t really exist. 

He doesn’t fall asleep easily that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter count went up on this because I split the last chapter into two parts and added an epilogue; they deserve more time to be soft lol
> 
> As always, come talk to me on twitter [@beepbeepbxtch](https://twitter.com/beepbeepbxtch) and tumblr at [toziertool](https://toziertool.tumblr.com/)!


	12. i guess that this must be the place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie takes a leap

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from 'This Must Be the Place'
> 
> Heads up, the rating goes . . . way up in this chapter. This wasn't necessarily in the plan, but it's where the story took me lol. If you want to skip that part, message me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/beepbeepbxtch) or [tumblr](https://toziertool.tumblr.com/) and I can tell you where to cut.

Eddie tries not to be weird and jumpy with Richie over the next week. Luckily, Richie is busy in meetings a lot and doesn’t seem to notice anything is up.

When he talks to his therapist about his plans to move out she suggests that he may be regressing into previous avoidance techniques. He gets incredibly defensive and spends the rest of the session arguing that this is his way of further exerting autonomy over his life. She doesn’t buy it.

Eddie starts looking at apartments without telling Richie. He browses in neighborhoods that aren’t far from the one he’s in now, tasteful apartments with balconies. He tells himself it might be nice to have a park nearby to jog in, or to be closer to his job. Besides, Richie’s space isn’t really his. He didn’t decorate it or purchase any of the furniture, and it would be nice to control the interior of his own house.

He still feels like shit. Every listing he looks at he imagines himself walking from room to room, eating dinner alone at the coffee table with only his own thoughts to keep him company. He’d pick out all the furniture, and maybe having a space arranged exactly how he wants it to be would be nice, but it would be just him in there.

He and Richie are eating dinner together, and Richie’s telling him about the venues they’re discussing booking for the tour. 

“We’re talking big stuff here. Like, Radio City Musical Hall big. Me, up on that stage, armed with nothing but my own dumb jokes, can you fucking believe it?”

“You’ve been knocking crowds dead for years with shitty jokes, I can’t imagine how you’ll do with your own material. You have nothing to worry about.”

Richie smiles at him. “Thanks, Eds,” he says, and takes another bite of the tortellini Eddie cooked. “This is really good,” he says. “Did you make this pesto?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “It would be better with fresh leaves though.”

“You could get a basil plant,” Richie suggests. “This place could use more plants in general.”

This seems as good a moment to tell him as any. “I was actually thinking about finding my own apartment,” he says. “You’ve put up with me for so long, but I have to set down my own roots at some point.”

Richie finishes chewing the bite he just took and swallows. “That’s great,” he says. “I’m sure the blank walls of my guest bedroom are getting boring. Don’t know what kind of nautical seascapes and woodland scenes you were used to having up at home.” 

“I don’t really think the Goodwill paintings look is the one I’m going to be going for,” Eddie responds. He feels a numbness settle in his chest. He doesn’t want to finish the rest of his pasta. “I’m definitely going to stay in LA. Maybe find some place between you and Bill. Keep close and all.”

“Glad you ended up liking it here,” Richie says.

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Turns out LA is great.” He doesn’t know if he’ll like LA as much without Richie to experience it with, but he guesses he should find out. And it’s not like he’ll never see Richie again; he’s just making the mature decision to extract himself from a situation that can only bring him pain. 

“Let me know if you need help looking,” Richie says. “You know, if you’re too scared to tour places by yourself. Things can be scary out there for a little guy like you.”

“You’d be terrible backup,” Eddie says.

“Hey, I ax murdered a guy, I think I’m good to take on a realtor.”

“It’s not like you’ll have an ax with you on the apartment tour.”

“I could bring an ax.”

“You don’t have an ax.”

“You don’t know the weapons I keep here.”

They go back and forth on that for a little while, and Eddie can convince himself it doesn’t feel weird. They watch TV together after dinner; they finally finished _The Office_ and started _Cowboy Bebop,_ at Richie’s recommendation. Maybe they won’t finish it, Eddie realizes. Maybe he’ll move out before they get to the end. And he’ll never know how it concludes because he definitely wouldn’t be able to continue it on his own; it would feel wrong. 

He looks up apartments on his computer for an hour before he falls asleep. All of them seem terrible.

\-----

Eddie keeps scouting out places over the next couple of weeks. He sees bungalows and studios, he looks at houses close to the beach and apartments close to downtown. All of the realtors and the spaces blend together after a while and he can’t imagine choosing one.

Having lunch with his co-workers one day he tells them that he’s moving. He gets a couple suggestions of good neighborhoods, some offers to share the numbers of moving companies. Laurie, who works in accounting, gives him a confused look. “Don’t you live with someone?” she asks.

“Not like that,” he says, and keeps talking with Aine about the attractions of Silver Lake. 

Things with Richie have been a little awkward. Eddie thinks he’s offended him by saying he’s moving out. He’s in video meetings half the nights Eddie’s home, and even though they still eat dinner together Richie doesn’t offer to help him cook. They watch TV, but don’t delve as deeply into the weird theories of _Twin Peaks,_ and even though they’re nearing the end of that neither of them have brought up starting a new show.

Eventually he finds something that feels the slightest bit okay. It’s a one bedroom a couple of miles from Richie’s with hardwood floors and good lighting. He brings Mike with him to get a second opinion. He’s chosen to involve Richie in absolutely no part of his move out; it feels uncomfortable to collaborate on this, like they’ll come too close to poking at why Eddie really wants to leave. He’s been avoiding Bill ever since he decided to leave Richie’s because he knows Bill will either tell him to get over himself and just tell Richie, or he’ll just be disappointed in him for being a coward. Eddie is mostly looking to avoid the disappointment. 

Mike looks approvingly around, checking outlet placement. “You could put a TV there,” he says, pointing to a spot on the wall. “And there,” he says, rounding on the kitchen, “You could put a breakfast nook.”

“Yeah, it’s lovely,” Eddie says in a monotone.

Mike rounds on him. “You shouldn’t do this if it’s going to make you sad,” he says. “You could talk to him.”

“And then I’d have to be doing this anyway and my friendship with Richie would be ruined. No thanks,” he says, moving further into the apartment. 

Mike thankfully offers no more opinions, other than those on the apartment, upon which he gives his seal of approval. Eddie tells his realtor that he’s interested in having papers drawn up after a couple of the issues he’s pointed out have been dealt with. He doesn’t hate the apartment, and that’s better than nothing. 

He tells Richie he’s found a place. Richie takes the news without much of a comment, telling Eddie he hopes it’s up to code because he knows he’s a stickler, and then changes the subject.

This is just another step on his path to his best life. Getting over Richie was something he hadn’t been able to contemplate before; it something he’d have to face eventually if he didn’t want to stay stagnantly in love with Richie the rest of his life. Which he kind of does, but he doesn't think that's a healthy impulse. 

Eddie lies in bed that night and thinks about the countdown he’s set in his head until he moves out. 

\---

It’s two weeks after he told Richie he’s moving, and Eddie’s cleaning up after dinner. He and Richie had eaten the chicken tikka masala Eddie had made before the other man escaped back to his office. He’d started using it as a space to work more recently, claiming he didn’t want to be disruptive in the house. Eddie’s got his ‘Songs Eddie Loved in High School but Forgot’ playlist, a collaboration between him and Richie, going over the speakers.

He hears an opening note that pulls him out of his considerations about how to best stack the big pot in the dishwasher. It’s a song Richie put on the playlist. He remembers listening to it for the first time lying on Richie’s floor, Richie telling him about the live performance it came from: “So he comes out on stage, right, and all he’s got is a guitar and a boom box and he just sets them down and says ‘Hi, I’ve got a tape I’d like to play for you.’ And while he’s playing the rest of the band comes out, and they just keep adding more and more people to the stage. He’s so fucking good, he runs around and comes out again in this big over-sized suit, and he just never stops fucking dancing.”

‘This Must be the Place,’ he remembers. It’s a Talking Heads song. 

He thinks about the night he left New York, listening to the Talking Heads on the radio, how he’d felt that sense of certainty wash over him that he needed to change his life. And it worked; he changed his life for the better. He let himself enjoy things, take new risks. But now he’s making a new series of choices and he’s certain about none of them. Moving out of Richie’s feels wrong; the only upside of it is that Eddie won’t have to deal with his own feelings, and that’s fucking cowardly. 

_“Home, it’s where I want to be”_

LA isn’t home, he thinks. Richie is home. He could be anywhere in the world with Richie and it would feel like the right place to be. He’d uprooted his whole life to be with him and he knows completely and totally it was the right decision, that he’d do it over and over again. He wants to be with Richie. He’s always wanted to be with Richie.

_“And you’re standing here beside me, I love the passing of time”_

He’s so fucking grateful everyday that he has Richie back in his life. He saw him every day for ten years, then not at all for over twenty, then again every day, and he knows which days have been the best. It amazes him sometimes that they’d missed out on so much of each other’s adulthoods and still had been able to pick back up like nothing had changed. Which, even though everything’s different, is true. They’re still RichieAndEddie, making dumb jokes at each other, and taking care of each other. And he’s choosing to take a step back from that, he’s separating his days from Richie’s again. He’s convinced himself that telling Richie the truth would make things weird but things have become weird anyway. Maybe what their friendship won’t be able to overcome is Eddie’s emotional dishonesty, the distance he’s taking without letting Richie in on his thought process. 

_“Home, it’s where I want to be but I guess I’m already there”_

He’d made a home here. With Richie. He’d made the life for himself the life he’d gone his whole existence without knowing he wanted, with just one key detail missing. And maybe Richie didn’t feel the same way but Eddie would never fucking know if he didn’t take a chance.

_“I guess that this must be the place”_

This was where he was supposed to be. With Richie, going through life together. And he's an idiot for not even trying, refusing to put himself out there over the sense of shame he’d feel from being rejected.

_“I can't tell one from another, did I find you or you find me”_

How fucking lucky is he, he realizes. How fucking lucky to have found not Richie once, but twice. What a privilege it is to have Richie Tozier in his life. Because Richie is the best person he knows. He takes care of his friends, and he can find the humor in anything, which Eddie will pretend is annoying, but sometimes it’s been the only thing that’s broken him out of a panic. He’s brave, and tries his best, and makes the people he loves lives fuller. Richie should know that someone loves him deeply, fully, completely. 

_“If someone asks, this is where I’ll be”_

He doesn’t want to leave. He really doesn’t. And he can blame it all he wants on the circumstances he’s trapped himself in, but he’s the one forcing himself to go. There is nothing he has to do; there are only the choices he makes, and he’s the only one who can control them. No one else but him is making the decision to impede his own happiness. He can lie to himself and say this is the next logical step any way, but fuck being logical. The brave next step would be to tell Richie how he feels. 

_“Out of all those kinds of people you got a face with a view”_

There’s no one he’s met in his whole life who compares to Richie. He wants to look at Richie everyday, trace his finger down the side of Richie’s face and smooth out his stupid hairy eyebrows. He wants to hold his cheeks in his hands and lean up to kiss him and make the corners of his mouth tug up in a smile. And everything he wants, everything he desires, could be separated from him by only his own choice to stay silent, to flee. Last time he’d run to something; this time, he’s running away. He’s running away from something that’s brought him so much joy because it’s easier than telling the truth. 

_“And you’ll love me till my heart stops, love me till I’m dead”_

He loves Richie. He’s loved Richie for his whole life, and he’s going to continue loving him until he dies. And that came so close to happening, he really almost fucking died, and the choice of whether or not to tell Richie would have been taken out of his hands forever. Now his choices are his alone.

He’s brave. He’s always been brave. He’d hidden it from himself for so long, forgotten his own courage, but it was there. He’d been strong enough to jump off the quarry edge into unknown waters before; watch him do it again.

He turns off the music, and closes the door on the half filled dishwasher. He walks over to Richie’s office, wipes his palms on his pants a couple of times, and knocks on the door. 

“Come in?” Richie says, inflection turning it into a question. 

Eddie opens the doors and steps inside. Richie is sitting at his desk, light of the computer screen reflecting off his glasses. He looks at Eddie with one eyebrow cocked. “Did the sink explode?” he asks. 

“I don’t want to move out,” Eddie says. He can’t look away from Richie. Everything in the room other than Richie’s face is a vague grey background, Eddie’s eyes tunneling in on him. His arms are just lying at his sides and he wants to wrap them around himself or fidget with them but he just keeps holding them straight and still. 

Richie stares at him in confusion. “Okay?”

“But I don’t want to stay here as your roommate.”

Richie just looks more nonplussed. “What?”

“I want-” Eddie’s heart is pounding in his ears. He feels it jump out of his chest, every beat pushing what he wants to say further and further to the surface. “I’m in love with you.”

He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Richie look more surprised. His mouth drops open, and his eyes go almost comically wide behind his glasses. “What did you just say?” he croaks out.

Eddie’s come this far; can’t really turn back around mid jump. “I said I’m in love with you. I have been my whole life. I didn’t know it when we were kids, I don’t know how I could have been so stupid to not realize, but on some level I must have known forever. Because I’ve never loved anyone else like I love you. When I saw you again in Derry I finally understood what I’d been missing for the past twenty something years. There’s no one like you in the fucking world, and I don’t know what I would have done if I’d never found you again. Being here with you is the best thing that ever happened to me, but I want more. And I’m sorry if you don’t feel the same way, I just had to tell you before I left to make sure I wasn’t making the biggest mistake of my life. So yeah,” he finishes lamely. “I’m in love with you.”

Richie hasn’t moved. He’s still just gaping at Eddie. 

“Are you going to say something?” Eddie asks. He’s so incredibly scared. It feels like he just put his guts outside his body, like he’s been exposed like he’s never been before in his life. 

Richie’s mouth snaps shut. “Oh my god,” he says. Then he stands up and shoves the chair he’s sitting in backward so fast it falls over. He scrambles around the desk, flying around the corners in a mess of limbs. “Oh my god,” Richie says again, and before Eddie has time to respond Richie’s kissing him.

One of Richie’s hands comes up to cup his face and it feels just as big and warm as Eddie imagined. Eddie can feel the way Richie’s lips settle and shape themselves over his own. He doesn’t react for just one second and then he’s kissing him back. He reaches one hand up to twine his finger through the hair on the nape of Richie’s neck, and Richie makes a sound between a sigh and a moan into his mouth. Eddie feels their shared breath as his lips part under Richie’s.

As incredible as this is, Eddie still pulls away because what’s happening right now feels unreal and he needs more clarification. Richie’s still holding his face in his hand. He looks dopey, dreamy. Smile going soft, he smooths a thumb down the line of Eddie’s cheek. He blinks tears away from his eyes but doesn’t take his hand off of Eddie’s face. “God, I can’t fucking believes this is happening. Is this happening?”

Eddie reaches out a hand and brushes away one of the tears making its way down Richie’s cheek. He feels like he’s standing on a precipice, but he feels so light that he thinks if he steps forward he’ll just float. “I don’t know, you tell me,” he says. “Are you in love with me or not?”

“Eddie, I love you so fucking much,” Richie says. “Like love you so much it hurts, love you so much you’re the first thing I think about in the morning and the last thing I think about at night. You’re it for me, you’ve always been it for me, since the day I fucking met you and you yelled at me for having untied shoes, and then leaned down and tied them. This,” he says, knocking his fist against his chest, “might as well have ‘Property of Eddie Kaspbrak’ tattooed on it.”

Eddie stares at him. “Holy shit,” he says, and then he grabs Richie’s shirt, pulls him down, and kisses him. 

He wants to keep telling Richie how much he loves him but he also doesn’t want to stop kissing Richie. So he tells him with every touch of their lips together, the gentle brush of their tongues. He presses his body against Richie and Richie pulls him closer. He feels like he might just tumble over, that Richie holding on to him is the only thing keeping him up. He can’t feel anything but Richie’s lips against his, Richie’s hand holding him by the waist and tugging him against him. He’s the one that moans this time as he feels Richie’s fingers spread out over his hips over the fabric of his clothes. He wants more, wants to be able to feel Richie’s skin on his.

It occurs to Eddie there’s a different way to say ‘I love you’, one he’s never enjoyed before but he thinks might be different with Richie as a partner. Eddie pulls away, cheeks flushed. “Do you want to go to your bedroom?” he asks. He doesn’t know what he wants, he just wants more. He feels on fire, like he’s entered a different plane of existence and he wants to live there for a long as possible. 

“Oh my god yes,” Richie says, and starts walking Eddie backwards. He won’t stop kissing him as they move, leaning down to peck his temple and his jawline. 

“You have to let me turn around,” Eddie says. “I’m going to bump into a wall.”

“I’ll guide you,” Richie says, maneuvering him out the office door. “Don’t you trust me?”

“Yes,” Eddie says openly. Richie pulls away and just looks at him again. He cups Eddie’s face in his hands. “God, I love you,” he says, and leans down to kiss him. 

Richie tries to keep walking them down the hallway slowly while still kissing and Eddie pulls away. “Richie, one of us will get injured,” he says, laughing. “You have to stop kissing me for a second.”

“Can’t, won’t,” Richie says. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for thirty years, you can’t stop me now.”

They eventually make it to Richie’s bedroom, Richie fumbling with the door handle even as he’s pushing Eddie against the wood. They tumble into the room, and Eddie leans up to keep kissing Richie. Now he’s the one walking them backwards, moving Richie forward until he hits the bed and sits down with a soft thud. Eddie pushes him back onto the bed and straddles him. He’s never felt like this in his life, wild and needy. He just knows he wants Richie in a way he’s never wanted anything before and he’s following his body’s lead for once in his life.

Richie looks up at him adoringly. He leans up and kisses the hollow between his collarbone and his neck. “I’ve always wanted to do that,” he says.

“Do it again,” Eddie says, 

Richie leans back in, tongue lapping gently at Eddie’s throat, and Eddie sighs. “I love you,” he breathes out. 

Richie pulls away. “So does this mean you’re not going to move out?” he says hopefully.

“I was only moving out because I thought you were completely uninterested in me.”

“Why the fuck would you think that?” Richie asks, looking completely bewildered. “I’m obviously obsessed with you.” 

“You said you wanted to start dating people! And you wanted to stop sleeping in the same bed!”

“I only said those things because I thought you were completely uninterested!” Richie is looking up at him with a dumb little frown.

Eddie starts laughing and collapses on top of Richie. He can’t believe he spent so much time over analyzing every interaction they had and he was still wrong. “We’re so stupid,” he says. “So fucking stupid.”

“You were sending out no signals! How was I supposed to know?” Richie says, running his hands down Eddie’s back.

“We’re not talking about this now,” Eddie says, pulling himself back up. “Later.” He leans down to kiss Richie again.

Eddie didn’t know kissing could be like this. He’d always been vaguely grossed out by the whole process, swapping spit and definitely germs as well. But this is Richie, and Eddie’s never wanted to be close to someone so completely before. He loses himself in the push and pull of their mouths, how it feels when Richie’s tongue slips between his open lips. 

Even though he’s loving this whole making out like teenagers thing he wants more. So, still perched over Richie, he experimentally grinds his hips down. Richie is hard, he realizes dizzily. He’s on top of Richie and Richie’s hard. He did that.

Richie groans loudly into his mouth. “You’re gonna kill me here Eds,” he says. “You can’t do things like that to a man.”

“I’ve never done them to a man before,” Eddie says. “So I don’t really know what I should and shouldn’t do.”

“I lied, keep doing that.”

Eddie repeats the gesture and Richie groans again. “Jesus,” he says. “Please tell me this is doing it for you like this is doing it for me.”

“I’m enjoying myself,” Eddie says.

Richie looks up at him. “Enjoying yourself? That’s it?”

“This is the best I’ve ever felt in my life, you happy now?”

Richie grins up at him. “Yeah, completely.”

Eddie leans back to keep kissing Richie. He notices he's hard too. He’s hard not just from thinking about Richie but from actually touching him, feeling him underneath him. He kisses Richie intensely, urgently. Richie pulls away, gasping. “Eddie, what do you want?” he says. “Just tell me what you want and I’ll do it.”

“I want you to take your shirt off,” Eddie blurts out. “I want to know what you feel like against me.”

“That’s hot enough that I’m going to get over my hang ups over you seeing me naked,” Richie says. Eddie hops off and Richie sits up to pull his shirt over his head. 

Eddie can’t help but stare. He'd had seen Richie shirtless at the beach, but this was different. He’s broad across the top and soft around the middle and Eddie wants to put his hands on every part of him. He reaches a finger out to trace a line down the center of his chest and Richie shivers. He runs his palms against Richie’s arm like he’s dreamed about doing, immersed in the feeling of Richie’s skin underneath his. Richie gestures at him. “Your turn now,” he says. 

“Do you really want to see the scar?” Eddie says. “Like do you really want to have to look at that while we . . .” he trails off lamely.

“Are you fucking kidding me, of course I do. You took your shirt off at the beach and I almost lost my mind. Didn’t get to touch you then so you can’t stop me from touching you now,” Richie says, reaching towards him.

“I can take off my own shirt,” says Eddie trying to bat him away. Richie just keeps coming. “Please let me take your clothes off,” he whines. “Please, pretty please?” He reaches down and begins to pull the hem of Eddie’s shirt up, gently disentangling his head on the way out. Once off, he just leans back and looks at Eddie. Grasping him by his shoulders, he pushes him back gently on the bed. He leans down and lightly trails his tongue over Eddie’s clavicle. He kisses down his chest, pressing his hands down on Eddie’s shoulders. Veering off to the left, he hovers above the scar. Eddie closes his eyes.

“Don’t look at it,” he says. “Not right now when I’d like you to be attracted to me.”

“I’m attracted to you literally all the time. And I will happily spend the rest of my life looking at this scar because it means you fucking lived, and now I get to do this to you.” Richie ducks down and presses a kiss to the raised scar tissue. He trails a finger around the edges. “It’s a little scaly,” he says. “Like a lizard. Or a komodo dragon. Are you part reptile now?” he asks, looking up at Eddie.

“If I were a komodo dragon I would have eaten you,” Eddie says. 

Richie leans back down and presses his lips down. He breathes out and blows a large raspberry on the scar. Eddie laughs without meaning to. “You know I can’t really feel that, right?” he says. 

“Yeah, not as satisfying as doing it on skin with actual nerve endings,” Richie says. He moves his hands back towards Eddie’s hips and kisses his way across his stomach. He looks up again. “What do you want?” he repeats. 

“Would you blow me?” Eddie says without meaning to. He flushes bright red. “I mean, not if you don’t want to, it’s just I’ve never done that before and I think I’d like it.”

“No one has ever blown you before?” Richie says, looking aghast. “What the fuck. Although, like, I understand how that’s a travesty, but if I could time travel back and tell thirteen year old Richie that he would be the one to give Eddie Kaspbrak his first blow job I would have just come in my pants immediately. Just jizzed everywhere,” he says, making a jerking gesture.

“You’re so gross,” Eddie says affectionately. “How am I about to let you put your mouth on my dick?”

“Because I’ve been demonstrating for years how talented I am with my mouth in the hopes you would notice and ask me to do this. Now take your clothes off,” he instructs, raising himself off him. Eddie awkwardly shuffles out of his pants, pushing his hips off the bed as he wiggles them off before throwing them to the side. He’s left in just his briefs and he leans back. Richie hovers over him. “Can I?” he says, gesturing at Eddie’s underwear. Eddie nods, suddenly nervous. Richie very gently reaches up and hooks his fingers through the waistband, pulling them down. He moves all the way down Eddie’s legs and peers up.

Eddie feels totally exposed, deeply vulnerable. He doesn’t want Richie to look at him and find any part of him lacking.

But that’s not what he sees in Richie’s eyes. He sees want, shining through, in a way that makes Eddie’s head swim from how raw it feels. Richie holds the edge of Eddie’s ankle and gently presses a kiss to the inside, running his other hand down Eddie’s leg. He moves upward, kissing up Eddie’s legs until he’s at the inside of his thighs. He moves his mouth closer and closer until he stops and pulls back. He hovers just a moment over Eddie, just breathing.

“Are you gonna get on with it or not?” Eddie asks. He feels himself falling back into the patterns of their antagonism because he needs something familiar in this new territory. He needs to remember even though he’s going to get his first blow job, and from a man, that man is still Richie, and their dynamic has just extended into new territory instead of changing completely. 

“Let me savor this,” Richie says. “I’ve been presented with the most perfect dick I’ve ever seen and I’m about to put it inside me, so excuse me if I just want to bask in this for a second.”

“Has anyone ever told you you talk too much?” Eddie says.

“You, almost everyday of my life,” Richie says, and leans down to wrap his lips around the tip.

Eddie can’t help it. He groans, long and needy. Richie’s mouth feels so hot around him, and he’s swirling his tongue all the way the head around in gentle strokes. He’s doing a flippy motion with it that Eddie swears muscles shouldn't be capable of.

Richie keeps lavishing attention on the very end, but wraps his hand around the base. His hand envelopes him, fingers wrapping around him like Eddie imagined so many times before. He bops up and down, gently running his tongue over the slit until Eddie clutches the bed sheets.

“That feels-that feels really good,” he gasps. 

Richie pops up. “Oh, baby,” he says. “We’re just getting started.” He dives back down and keeps going this time, taking all of Eddie’s length into his mouth. He presses his tongue flat against the bottom and moves up slowly, dragging it the whole way up. He pulls off with a pop, wrapping his lips around the tip on the way out. Without giving Eddie a chance to breathe he leans back in, moving up and down. 

Eddie knows that right now his dick is getting covered in the spit of another person, but it feels so fucking good he doesn’t care. He likes it, even. He likes feeling dirty, likes watching Richie move over him.

“Love it when you call me baby,” he gasps. “Always wanted you to mean it.”

Richie pulls away and replaces his mouth with his hand. “I meant it,” he says, stroking Eddie up and down gently. “I meant it every time. I meant every dumb endearment, every joked I cracked about how you were the only one for me.”

“Even the mushy stuff? The over the top jokes, the grand declarations?” Eddie says, feeling warmth spread through him.

“Especially the mushy stuff,” Richie says, and ducks his head back down. 

Richie keeps moving and Eddie does nothing but focus on the sensation of Richie enveloping him, Richie pulling him deep into his mouth. Eddie knows he isn’t huge, but Richie takes all of him, sometimes using his hand at the base while he pays attention to the tip. With every drag of Richie’s lips Eddie feels something deeper and deeper build in his gut. 

“Richie I’m going to-I’m-” he gasps out. 

Richie doesn’t stop moving. He pulls up for just a second, still licking the tip. “Come for me,” he mumbles out. “Please, Eds, come for me.” And then he takes him so deep Eddie can feel himself hit the back of Richie’s throat. 

Eddie’s vision goes white, and he feels like he’s buzzing down the very atoms at the edges of his fingertips. He comes without a strangled shout, feeling himself empty down Richie’s throat. Richie just keeps moving, sucking his cheeks in as Eddie finishes. He doesn’t pull off until Eddie’s gone totally soft. When he does pull off he does so gently, taking his time. 

Eddie can’t do anything but lay there. He feels completely boneless, blissed out. He didn’t know another person could make him feel like that, that anything could make him feel like that, and he wants to live in the afterglow forever. 

Richie crawls back up the bed and lies next to him. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “I blew your mind, right?” he says excitedly. “Like, ten out of ten, top experiences of Eddie’s life.”

Eddie just lays back with his eyes closed for a second. When he’s gathered himself together enough to speak he says, “Don’t ruin this with your constant need for affirmation. But I can say confidently that was the best blow job I’ve ever gotten.”

Richie looks pleased until he thinks about it for a second, then he groans. “Fuck,” he said. “Even if I give you the best head of your life I’ll also have given you the worst head of your life. Like, I wish I could have given you your first blowjob when we were sixteen, and then you could have gone off and gotten worse head and then when we remembered you could be positive I was the best, and someone else would have been the worst head you'd ever gotten. Actually, I wish I could’ve given you your first blow job when we were sixteen and then just kept blowing you for the rest of our lives. I’d still be the worst head you’d ever had but at least you wouldn’t have gone thirty years without getting your dick sucked.”

Eddie looks at him. “You’re planning on being the first and last person who blows me?”

Richie looks panicked. “We can pretend I didn’t say that.”

Eddie feels more and more elated with everything new thing that comes out of Richie’s mouth. It’s not just him running wild fantasies through his head about forever. Richie’s doing it too, he’s been doing it this whole time, and now Eddie gets to live it with him. He leans in, and Richie pulls back. “What are you doing?” he asks.

“I’m trying to kiss you, asshole, what does it look like?” Eddie says.

“I literally just swallowed your cum,” Richie says. “And you’re going to kiss me?”

“Not if you say it like that,” Eddie responds, but keeps leaning in anyway.

This time it’s lazy, slow. Eddie takes his time exploring Richie’s mouth, gently tracing his tongue over the back of his teeth. He goes to wrap his leg over Richie’s and realizes Richie is still wearing his jeans. He pulls back and gestures to them. “Do you wanna take those off?” he says.

Richie looks at him in confusion. “Why?” 

“So I can . . . take care of you,” Eddie says without fully knowing what he’s offering to do.

“You don’t have to do that,” Richie says.

Eddie reaches out a hand and gently trails it across Richie’s collarbone. “I want to,” he says. “I want to hold all of you.”

Richie shivers. “Not saying no to that,” he says in a strangled voice. He scoots to the edge of the bed and stands up, shimmying out of his jeans. He kicks them off, then takes a deep breath and pulls off his underwear.

Eddie just stares. “Holy shit,” he says.

Richie looks uncomfortable. “What?” he says.

“Were you actually this big when we were kids or did it become some kid of self-fulfilling prophecy? Like, did you talk your dick into getting huge?”

“I told you! I told you all the time, it’s not my fault you didn’t believe me.”

“Goddammit,” Eddie says. “We’re absolutely not fucking right now because I don’t know how I’ll be able to take that.”

“Oh my god, fucking is on the table? Like, me putting my dick up your ass fucking?” Richie looks completely delighted.

“Or me putting my dick up your ass,” Eddie says. “Who knows what I’ll be into.” He’s thought out the semantics of gay sex many times, with Richie specifically, but it’s very different being presented with it in person.

“Man, I am so excited to find out,” Richie says, making his way back to the bed. He lies down on his back next to Eddie. “So, uh,” he says. “This thing is kind of in your hands now. Literally in your hands, if that’s what you’re into.” 

“I’ve never done this,” Eddie says. “I mean, I’ve never done this with anyone else. I know how to jerk myself off, but you know, it’s different. Don’t wanna mess this up.”

“You couldn’t possibly mess this up,” Richie says. “You could leave rope burns on my dick and I’d still thank you.”

“Glad to know there’s no line,” Eddie says, and reaches a hand out, wrapping it around the base. Richie feels solid and hot under his touch, thicker than Eddie. Eddie begins to stroke his hand up then stops. He pulls it away and spits into his palm. He frowns, and holds his hand out to Richie. “Can you spit?” he asks.

Richie’s eyes are wide behind his glasses. “You want my spit on your hand?” 

“I’m trying not to leave rope burns on your dick, okay? Now help me get this wetter.”

“Oh god,” Richie groans, and leans down and spits. “I’m going to have a heart attack over here.”

“Not until I’ve finished with you,” Eddie says. Something about Richie having made him come has made him feel confident, sexy in a way he’s never felt before in his life. He’s nervous but he wants to make Richie feel good like Richie made him feel good. He brings his hand back to Richie’s dick and begins to move it up and down, trying to move his wrist as fluidly as possible. Richie twitches beneath his hands. 

“That’s . . . that’s good,” he gasps. “God, anything you do would be good.”

“You’ve been thinking about this?” Eddie says, continuing to move his hand up and down. He stops to give the base a little squeeze and Richie moans, long and low.

“Since I was thirteen,” he says. “You have no idea how many times I’ve touched myself since you moved in and felt like a huge perv afterwards.”

“Me too,” Eddie says, stroking Richie. “Not necessarily the feeling like a perv part, but I definitely thought about the time you wore your boxers to the living room for like a month afterwards.”

Richie shudders. “You’re the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen and I just-” he cuts off when Eddie moves his thumb over the tip. “Want you,” he pants out. “Want you so bad.”

“You’re so fucking hot,” Eddie says, moving his hand faster. “I like your jaw, and your shoulders, and your hands.” He feels heady from the sensation of wanting and knowing he’s wanted in return. He reaches his free hand up and thumbs Richie’s nipple. He has no idea if guys are into that, but he trusts Richie to tell him if he’s not.

Richie is into it, judging by the sound he makes. Without taking his hand off Richie’s dick he leans up and latches his mouth onto Richie’s other nipple. He swirls his tongue around and wonders what it would be like to blow Richie, to wrap his tongue all the way around him. They can get to that later. Eddie realizes that they can get to everything later, they can experience everything he’s been dreaming about together, and his grip on Richie tightens.

Richie moans. “Keep going,” he says. “Just like that.”

Eddie moves up and attaches his lips to Richie’s neck. He idly wonders if he’s giving his first hickey, and if Richie cares. He decides he probably doesn’t, and sucks harder. 

Richie’s making little noises beneath him, pants and gasps of breath. “I’m close,” he says. “I’m so close.”

“Let go,” Eddie says. “I want to make you feel good, because you’re all I’ve ever wanted and I’m so fucking in love with you.”

Richie lets out a guttural moan. Eddie feels his dick pulse underneath his hand. Richie comes on his own stomach, Eddie continuing to pump him until there’s nothing left. He leans back and looks over Richie. His eyes are closed and he’s panting a little. His cheeks are flushed, and he’s the most beautiful thing Eddie has seen.

Although he stills feels incredible, the physical realities of sex are setting on him. He looks down at Richie’s chest. “I really want to lie on you but you’re covered in your own cum,” Eddie says. He hops off the bedroom and goes to the bathroom to grab a towel. While in there, he stops to look at himself in the mirror. His hair is all mussed up from Richie’s fingers running through it, and his cheeks are rosy. He unfortunately does feel a little sticky from the sweat, so he walks back into the room and puts the towel next to Richie “I’m going to hop in the shower.” Richie makes a sound like “Nnngh,” and Eddie smiles at him and goes back to the bathroom.

Eddie lets the water wash down over him. He’d just had sex with Richie, he thinks giddily. Because Richie loves him. Everything he’d felt so deeply had been felt in return. He’d taken his big, grand step, and things had turned out more wonderfully than he’d ever let himself hope.

When he comes back Richie hasn’t moved from his spot on the bed. His eyes are still closed. Eddie lies down next to him and just looks at his face.

“I can’t believe you didn’t take your glasses off,” he says. “Didn’t that get uncomfortable?”

“Wanted to see you,” Richie says. He opens his eyes and looks over at Eddie. “Still want to see you.”

Eddie reaches out a hand and traces it over Richie’s face. “This doesn’t feel real,” he says. “Is this real?” he asks.

“Maybe, maybe not. We could just be inside some giant turtle’s dream,” Richie says.

“Weird dreams for a turtle to have,” Eddie says. 

Richie just reaches out and pulls him closer. Eddie settles against him. Even though he knows getting Richie’s sweat all over him negates the effects of the shower he still wants to feel him. Richie’s arms wrap around Eddie and Eddie rests his head on his chest. Richie settles back deeper against the pillows.

“You’ve got to take your glasses off if you’re going to fall asleep,” Eddie says fondly. “Can’t believe you lose all will to stay awake after you come.”

“You jerked me into another dimension,” Richie says sleepily. “Can’t help it if a man gets overwhelmed.”

Eddie reaches up and takes Richie’s glasses off his face. He rolls off Richie to place them on the bedside table, then scooches over on the bed. Richie just pulls him back on top of him.

“Can I stay here?” Eddie asks. “If you want I can go sleep in my room, I just-”

Richie’s arms tighten around him. “Don’t go anywhere,” he says. “Sleeping in a bed without you is bullshit.”

“Then why did you want to stop?” Eddie asks.

“Tomorrow,” Richie says. “I’m not coherent enough to talk about what an idiot I’ve been. Just wanna fall asleep next to you.”

“Soft,” Eddie scoffs, even as he spread his hand across Richie’s hip. 

“You make me soft, you make me hard; Eddie Kaspbrak can do it all.”

“You’re a doofus, you know that? An enormous doofus.”

“Yeah, but I’m your doofus,” Richie mumbles into his hair, and Eddie shivers. “Mine?” he says hesitantly.

“Yours,” says Richie. “All yours.”

Eddie doesn’t even pretend to scoff this time; he just nestles closer to Richie. He feels so happy he doesn’t know how one body is containing it all. He falls asleep lulled by Richie’s gentle breathing, the sound he’d missed so much, wondering how he got so lucky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They did it!! Finally!! 
> 
> The entire conceit for this fic was Eddie realizing he needed to leave his wife to 'Once in a Lifetime' and confess his love to Richie to 'This Must Be the Place.' Then I had to invent a whole plot to enable that.
> 
> I just thought Eddie deserved his first blow job because Eddie deserves so much.
> 
> Also, the world is crazy right now. [Here's](https://twitter.com/esmeatgrlpwr/status/1267771312107331584?s=21) a master list of different resources, links to donate, and information.
> 
> Come talk to me on twitter [@beepbeepbxtch](https://twitter.com/beepbeepbxtch) and tumblr at [toziertool](https://toziertool.tumblr.com/)!


	13. thank you for sending me an angel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie and Richie figure things out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from 'Thank You For Sending Me An Angel'
> 
> Heads up, there's another nsfw scene in the middle of this. Message me on twitter [twitter](https://twitter.com/beepbeepbxtch) or tumblr [tumblr](https://toziertool.tumblr.com/) if you want to know where to cut

Eddie wakes up in the same position he did the first night he slept in Richie’s bed; curled around Richie’s big frame, one arm around his middle and another underneath his head. But unlike the first night, there’s no other barrier separating them, no layer of clothing. Just Richie’s skin, warm up against Eddie’s limbs and chest. His legs are tangled up in Richie’s; he can feel Richie’s leg hair brushing up against his calves. He can hear Richie’s gentle wheezing snores, the soft rise and fall of his chest underneath Eddie’s hand.

Eddie just lies there for a moment. He looks at the spot at the back of Richie’s neck that he longed to kiss the first night he spent in this bed. He leans out and presses his lips against the nape of Richie’s neck. Richie stirs underneath him but doesn’t wake up.

Judging by the light coming through the edges of Richie’s curtains, Eddie's alarm will be going off shortly. He gently extracts his legs from Richie’s, drawing his arm out from underneath his head. He rolls to the edge of the bed and hops off, going to root around for his pants in the darkness. He stumbles on them eventually, and digs his phone out of his pocket. He preemptively turns off his alarm before opening up his email to send a quick little note to the office telling him that he’s sick and unfortunately can’t make it to work today. Then he drops his phone on the bedside table and crawls back next to Richie. He tries to wrap his arms around him again, but Richie just rolls over and grabs for him, nestling Eddie’s face into the crook of his neck. “Don’ go,” he mumbles. “Stay.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Eddie says, and curls his arms into Richie’s chest.

When he wakes again the light has gotten brighter in the room. He hopes it’s still morning but he can’t be sure.

He can feel someone in bed next to him even before he opens his eyes. When he does he finds Richie lying on his side, head propped up by his hand, just looking at Eddie. When they make eye contact Richie’s face breaks out in a soft smile. “I never got to see you wake up,” he says. “You’d always leave for work before I got up, so I missed out on the sight of a cute, sleepy Eddie.” He looks confused for a second. “Why aren’t you at work?”

“I’m faking sick,” Eddie says, reaching out a hand to trace a line down Richie’s face. “No fucking way I’m going into the office after this.”

Richie’s smile widens. “But, Eds, you are sick, don’t you know?”

Eddie says exasperatedly, “There’s nothing wrong with me, I don’t-”

“Sick with love!” Richie announces, and dives in to kiss Eddie’s face. Eddie laughs, and half-heartedly bats at his shoulders. “Morning breath!” he says. “I won’t kiss you with morning breath.”

“Don’t make me go brush my teeth,” Richie whines. He pulls Eddie closer, wrapping his arms around him. Eddie can feel their feet tangling together. 

“We have to get up eventually,” Eddie says, and wriggles his way out of Richie’s grasp. “If you have a clean mouth we can go back to making out, isn’t that enough of an incentive?” 

“Getting to kiss you would incentivize me to climb up Mount Doom,” Richie says. He sits up in bed, and grabs his glasses from the bedside table. He looks at Eddie in wonder. “I was afraid when I went to sleep that when I woke up you wouldn’t be there, that I’d come to passed out in my office slumped over my keyboard. But you’re still here.”

Eddie gets back on the bed and leans towards Richie. He presses a closed mouth kiss to Richie’s lips, then pulls away. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says. “Except for right now because my mouth is gross.” He hops back off. “Now brush your teeth,” he says, and heads back to his room. 

He goes through his morning routine, getting into his pajamas, and, after thoroughly rinsing his mouth, he walks back to Richie’s room. Not finding him there, he heads down to the kitchen. Richie’s at the counter, pouring beans into the coffee grinder. When Eddie walks in he pulls his lips back and points to his mouth. “Clean! Immaculate!” he says, baring his teeth. “I even used mouthwash not as a morning pick me up. Now will you kiss me?”

“Don’t fucking drink mouthwash,” Eddie says even as he’s striding over to wrap his arms around Richie’s neck. Their lips meet, and Eddie eagerly opens his mouth. Richie’s mouth tastes like the mint toothpaste he just used.

Richie pulls away from the kiss. “We should stop because if you don’t get caffeine into your system in the next ten minutes you’re going to turn into a gremlin.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie says automatically. “And it’s water after midnight that turns you into a gremlin.” There’s a comfort in the fact that they can still fall into their old patterns even as something major has changed in their relationship. Even if he wasn’t exactly sure how that change was going to manifest itself. Something that had to be confronted at some point.

“We should talk too,” Eddie says. “About . . . stuff.” In the light of day he realizes he and Richie hadn’t really communicated anything to each other last night other than ‘I love you and I really want to have sex with you.’

“Do we have to?” Richie says, going back to the coffee grinder. “You know how I feel about conversations where I’m not allowed to make dick jokes.”

“You’ve never been in a conversation where you’ve stopped yourself from making dick jokes. And unless you’ve developed telepathic powers I don’t know about then yeah, we have to talk,” Eddie says, taking a seat at the counter.

“So,” he says.

“So,” Richie responds.

“You love me. I love you, and you love me too.” 

Richie smiles from his spot in front of the stove putting the kettle on. Eddie’s seen Richie smile more in the past twelve hours then he’s seen him smile in the past two weeks. He missed it; he loves that he’s the one making him smile now. “I like this talk so far,” he says. “Let’s just keep it on a loop of ‘I love you’s’ and leave it at that.”

“But somehow we messed it up,” Eddie continues. “Let’s backtrack. You thought I wasn’t into you because I said I wanted to move out.”

“Right.”

“Which I decided to do because you told Audra you wanted to be set up with her friends. And because you wanted to stop sleeping in the same bed when I got back from New York, which convinced me you didn’t have feelings for me. Which, as it turns out, is untrue.” Eddie frowns at him. “So why did you want to stop sleeping in the same bed?”

Richie groans. “Fuck, this is embarrassing,” he says. He takes a seat next to Eddie at the counter. “So the day after you left for New York I called Bev because I wanted to give her an update on the Deadlights dreams. I told her we’d started sleeping in the same bed, and that it was comforting to know you weren’t dead, even if it would have been nicer to wake up and have you there. I was telling her how much better things were, and how I just hoped I could keep it up without you catching onto me having feelings for you. And she said ‘Honey, if he doesn’t know you have feelings for him he’s going to know soon.’ And so I asked her what she meant. And she, uh, pointed out, from her experience in the matter, that when there’s a man sleeping in bed with you who’s attracted to you there’s certain tell tale signs.” Richie looks supremely uncomfortable.

“What do you mean?” Eddie asks.

“Boners, alright?” Richie says. “Boners are a dead giveaway. So she told me that even if I hadn’t gotten hard from sharing a bed with you yet, I was going to eventually, and if we ended up sleeping on top of each other you were going to feel my massive erection and know that I have a gay crush on you. So I freaked out and spent like a day moping, convinced that you were gonna find out if we kept on sleeping in the same bed. And then you went to that gay bar I sent you too, and you talked to that guy, and I felt so jealous I could hardly stand it. I went down this whole spiral of ‘he’s not interested in you like that, and this just his way of indicating that because you’ve made things weird, and the best thing to do would probably be to flee the country’. But when you called me after you had that nightmare I realized I was being a dumbass, and even if you didn’t love me back that didn’t give me an excuse to be weird and shitty. So I decided to tell you I wanted to go back to sleeping in different beds and pretend like everything was normal.”

Eddie just stares at him. “That was your big problem?” he says. “Fear of nocturnal erections?”

“I thought it had either happened and you were too weirded out to say anything, or that it was going to happen and you were going to ask me why sleeping really close to you got me massively turned on. And then you would know how I felt, and everything would be terrible.”

“You idiot,” Eddie says. “If I’d woken up and felt your dick against me I would’ve had to leave to go jerk off in the shower.”

Richie sighs happily. “Please tell me more about touching yourself while thinking about me. I wanna save that so I can think about it next time I jerk off, like masturbation inception.”

“You know I only talked to that guy to see if it would get a reaction out of you? Was really disappointed when you seemed supportive.”

“Fuck, really? That was all a ruse, I listened to ‘Nothing Compares to U’ in the dark for two hours.”

“You’re such an idiot,” Eddie says. “I talked to Mike about the Deadlights sleeping arrangements the day I left for New York, and he pointed out how gay it was that two men were sleeping in bed together every night. My conclusion from that talk was that it was possible you had feelings for me, because Jesus Christ Richie, how did neither of us figure this out when we kept fucking cuddling?”

“You can platonically cuddle,” Richie says. “Besides, it kept happening in our sleep, I had no idea if you meant it.”

“Well, I fucking meant it,” says Eddie, and leans in to kiss him. He thinks he might never get tired of kissing Richie. He’s missed out on it for the past thirty years and he plans to spend the next thirty making up for that.

The whistle of the kettle goes off before they can get too distracted, and Richie hops off to pour the water in the French press. He sets a timer and leans back over the counter.

“So yeah, I came to pretty much the opposite conclusion-the correct conclusion-and decided to tell you how I felt when I came back from New York,” Eddie continues.

“Why the fuck didn’t you?” Richie says. Comprehension dawns on him. “Oh god,” he says, pressing his palms against his eyes. “Because I said I wanted to start sleeping in separate beds. I am so, so stupid.”

“Sometimes,” Eddie says affectionately. He grabs one of Richie’s hands and presses a kiss to his palm. “We got there eventually though.”

Richie looks up at him. “Eddie, I’m so happy,” he says. “I’ve never been this happy in my entire life.”

“Me neither,” Eddie says. “But we’ve both had terrible lives so that’s not saying much.”

Richie laughs, and the timer for the French press goes off. Richie gently pushes the plunger down, and grabs two mugs from the cabinet. Eddie just watches him. Richie pulls the milk from the fridge, rooting around for the sugar bowl for himself (an Eddie purchase), and makes their two coffees. He sets both their mugs down on the counter, and slides back into the seat next to Eddie.

Eddie gratefully takes his first sip of coffee, then something Richie said earlier catches up to him. “So wait,” he says. “If you lied about not wanting to sleep in the same bed because you stopped having Deadlights dreams that means you also lied about not having Deadlights dreams anymore.”

“Oh yeah, I still have them,” Richie says, taking a gulp of his own coffee. “I think they even got worse.”

“How did I miss that?” Eddie asks. “I used to hear you . . . screaming when you had them before we started sleeping together.” 

“I bought a football mouth guard,” Richie says. “It’s really bulky, covers your top and bottom teeth and has this hole in the middle so you can breathe. It muffles the shouting.” 

Eddie stares at him. Then leans over and flings his arms around Richie. “I’m so sorry,” he mumbles into his shoulder. “I’m so sorry I didn’t say anything when I came back and you had to keep going through that.”

Richie tangles his fingers into the hair at the hair of Eddie’s neck. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” he says gently. “You were going to be braver than I ever could, and I had to go and misinterpret everything and ruin things.”

“Would you ever have told me?” Eddie asks. “If I hadn’t said anything first?”

Richie’s grip around him tightens. “Probably not,” he says quietly. “I never, not once, thought you could feel the same way.”

Eddie pulls away. “Why?” he asks. “I’m obviously crazy for you. Did you not pick up on that when I left my wife to be with you?”

“You didn’t leave her to be with me, you just left her.”

“I kind of did,” Eddie says. “I realized I was happier with you than I had been in the past twenty years and I left to chase that feeling. So really I left for my own happiness, and that just happens to be with you.”

Richie looks down at him. His face is glowing, looking more open than Eddie has ever seen it before. He leans in close to kiss him. 

They’re at a weird angle on the stools, so Eddie hops down and pushes Richie’s knees apart, situating himself firmly in their place. He slides his hands over Richie’s shoulders, feeling his chest through the material of his shirt. Richie feels warm even through the fabric.

They keep kissing for what could be a minute or what could be an hour before Eddie pulls away. “We need to eat something,” he says. “It’s important to start off the day with a meal.”

“Fuck that,” says Richie. “I’m having you for breakfast.”

It’s such a stupid come on that he can’t help but snort. But Richie looks so giddy, so enthralled to be wrapped up in Eddie. This goes against his regular routine, but Eddie’s happy to throw his routine out the window. Eddie makes a fake exasperated sigh, and presses close to Richie once more.

They navigate themselves fumblingly back to Richie’s bedroom. Once they make it to Richie’s bed Eddie’s tugging at his clothes, pulling Richie’s shirt over his head. 

“Just can’t get enough, can you?” he asks, grinning, as he climbs back on top of Eddie. “No,” Eddie says, and finds his new favorite spot on Richie’s neck.

Soon, they’re both completely naked, legs tangled against each other. They’re kissing long and slow, and Eddie can feel himself pressed up against Richie’s stomach. Eddie pushes his hips up against him and Richie kisses him more urgently. He tentatively reaches a hand out and grabs Richie’s ass, pulling him closer. He moans as he feels Richie against his leg. He wants-

“I want you to fuck me,” he whispers into Richie’s ear.

Richie shivers, his whole body moving above Eddie’s. “We don’t have to do that,” he says. “I mean, you just got your first blow job, you wanna follow it immediately with your first time taking it up the ass?”

“Am I supposed to space out my sex acts? Because that sounds awful. I thought the good thing about sex is that you could keep having it, and it just keeps getting better.”

Richie pulls away and hovers over Eddie. “I just don’t want you to feel like I’m moving things too fast,” he says seriously. “Like, you don’t have to do anything for me, you know?”

Eddie pulls him down to kiss him. “I want this,” he says when he pulls away. “I want to know what you feel like. And maybe I’ll get five seconds in and realize it hurts and I don’t want it but then we’ll just stop.”

“In that case I’d be honored if you let me attempt to fuck you,” Richie says. He leans back in to kiss Eddie. Before they can get distracted Eddie says, “Do you have, uh, supplies?”

“Not like I’ve been really getting laid recently, but I’m always prepared.” Richie rolls off from on top of him and opens his bedside drawer. He pulls out a bottle of lube and a condom. He crawls back over to Eddie and gently grasps his dick. “God, I don’t ever wanna stop touching you,” he says. He starts stroking up and down, and Eddie sighs. Without taking his hand off Eddie’s dick Richie tries to pop open the bottle of lube. It doesn’t work, and with a sigh he removes his hand. “Lie back on the pillows,” he instructs, and successfully squirts some lube into his hand. He leans down and wraps his mouth around Eddie. He gently takes him in and out and Eddie relaxes down into the bed.

He feels Richie reach up and lightly begin circling with his thumb. Eddie shivers at the contact. He’s done this to himself before but he’s never had another human touch him before like this, never felt the stretch of any finger but his own. 

Richie gently pushes a finger forward and Eddie gasps. Richie already feels so much bigger than his own hands do. It feels a little strange, like it always does at first; the intrusion of a foreign object inside a part of your body that’s not designed to receive it. But the stretch of Richie’s finger feels so fucking good.

Richie works his finger in to the first knuckle, still sucking on Eddie. His other hand is holding down Eddie’s hip. He very tentatively begins to move his finger, circling it around. Eddie groans. Richie pulls his head up. “You’re so fucking tight,” he breathes out. “Can’t believe how good you feel.” He slowly starts to pull his finger in and out, gently exploring Eddie. He keeps sucking Eddie off, bobbing his head up and down even as me moves his finger. He pushes deeper, getting his finger all the way into the second knuckle. 

“Your hands are so fucking big,” Eddie gasps out. “Like, I know all of you is huge, but I really love how your hands feel.”

Richie pulls his finger in and out, lapping his tongue around the base of Eddie’s dick in a way that makes his toes curl. He pulls his finger all the way out, and goes to grab more lube. He squirts some into his palm before turning all his attention back to Eddie. Reaching his fingers back, he gently presses a second one in, slowly moving back inside him.

“Feels different when it’s you,” Eddie says. “I can’t get that fucking angle on my own.”

Richie pulls his head off Eddie’s dick. “Is that all I am to you? Like one of those back scratchers but for your asshole?”

“You’ve got other uses,” Eddie says, and Richie shivers. He begins to thrust his fingers in deeper, then looks up at Eddie. “Is this okay?” he asks.

“Jesus Christ, I’m not going to break, just keep going.”

“Like it when you’re bossy,” Richie says before returning his mouth to Eddie’s dick. He scissors the two fingers still buried inside Eddie and Eddie feels himself press around Richie. Richie curls his fingers, and Eddie involuntarily bucks his hips off the bed sheets. He feels his dick hit the back of Richie’s throat while Richie simultaneously pushes further inside him. Richie moves his head almost lazily, putting most of his attention into continuing to stretch Eddie out.

Eddie just lies back and feels himself drift into a haze. Richie buries his head between Eddie's legs, reaching down and wrapping a hand under his ass to pull him closer. He sucks Eddie more urgently, moving his head up and down.

“If you keep doing that I’m going to come,” Eddie says, panting. “And I really want to come while you’re inside me.”

Richie pulls off. “How do you know how to say the exact right thing to get even more blood rushing to my dick?” Without removing his hand from Eddie he gropes futilely around the bed for the condom. Eddie reaches out and grabs it. Richie, very unfortunately, removes his fingers from Eddie, and moves up next to Eddie on the bed. Eddie passes him the condom, and Richie rips open the packet with his teeth. “You shouldn’t do that,” Eddie chastises. “You could catch the latex wrong and rip the condom.”

“What, like I’m going to get you pregnant?” Richie says, rolling the condom down over himself. “Not the point, asshole,” Eddie responds.

Richie looks over at Eddie. “How do you wanna do this?” he says. He looks incredibly nervous. Eddie leans over and cups his face, kissing him gently. Richie responds, opening his mouth. Eddie wraps his leg around Richie’s hip and pulls him closer. Their kissing turns heated, almost sloppy, as Eddie clutches onto Richie. He pulls away. “I want to see you,” he says. “I want to watch you while you fuck me.” He feels like there’s been a part of him unlocked, the confidence to finally give voice to his desires surfacing under Richie’s touch. 

Richie just looks at him, mouth slightly parted, before he dives back in hungrily. He gently rolls Eddie over until he’s hovering above him, propping himself between Eddie’s knees. Eddie frowns at him a little bit. “Is something wrong?” Richie says worriedly.

“No, it’s just . . . what the fuck do I do with my legs?” Eddie says “Like, do I just stick them out, or do I wrap them around you, or put them up in the air? I’m definitely not flexible enough to put them on your shoulders.”

“Jesus Christ, there isn’t a manual or something, I don’t know.”

“Look, this is the first time in my life I’ve ever had sex with a man, I want to make sure I’m doing this right.”

“There’s not really a way to do it wrong,” Richie says, nudging his legs open. “At least, I don’t think there’s a way for us to do it wrong.” He leans down to kiss Eddie and Eddie loses himself against the push and pull of their mouths. 

He feels the head of Richie’s dick against him. He’s incredibly worked up and he wants to feel Richie inside him. So he pulls away and says roughly, “Stop being so cautious and fuck me.”

Richie groans and pushes in further. Eddie regrets his bold words; It feels a little strange and Eddie pants out, “Hold, hold.” Richie stops immediately. “Shit, did I hurt you?” he says anxiously. 

Eddie pulls him in for a kiss. “No, I’m fine,” he whispers. “Just give me a second, okay?” He holds still and tries to get accustomed to the feeling of Richie inside him. The feeling of intrusion fades and he wants more. He leans back and experimentally pushes his hips down and feels Richie slide deeper in him. “Keep going,” he whispers, and Richie continues to push forward slowly. He moves inch by agonizing inch and even as it burns a little it feels good. 

“You’re so much bigger than your fingers,” Eddie says. “God, I didn’t know I could feel this full.” Richie just keeps sliding forward until Eddie bottoms out. He stiffens. “Don’t move for a second,” Eddie says, and lets the feeling of surrounding Richie flow over him. Richie stays perfectly still, arms propping him up over Eddie’s sides.  
Eddie looks up at him. He still has his glasses on and his pupils are so dilated Eddie can barely make out the ring of blue at the edges. He’s looking down at Eddie like he’s something precious; not breakable, not fragile, but something to be cherished and held from a sense of shared strength, not perceived weakness.

“You can keep moving,” Eddie says. Richie nods a little frantically before he pulls part of the way out and pushes back in, gently rocking against Eddie. He sets up a gentle pace, moving in and out. 

Eddie presses his hips forward again. “More,” he whispers, and he feels Richie’’s hips stutter above him. He pulls all the way out before thrusting back in. Eddie rocks his hips forwards moving up and down over Richie. He feels fucking wanton, experience everything he’s desired. Only it’s so much more when it's really happening, so different when he doesn’t have to imagine how Richie feels inside him.

Richie’s moving faster now, still taking care to be gentle. He goes deeper in with his next thrust, hitting Eddie’s prostate and Eddie lets out what he’s sure is a very embarrassing high pitched sound. “Knew you’d like that,” Richie mumbles, before pulling all the way out only to push back into him, hitting the spot again. 

Eddie shouldn’t have worried about what to do with his legs because they’re instinctively wrapped around Richie’s thighs. Richie’s moving faster, harder now, and Eddie pants underneath him. 

Richie props himself up a little and reaches between them, grasping Eddie’s dick in his hand. It twitches underneath his touch; Richie runs his thumb over the head and Eddie thrusts forward, simultaneously pulling Richie deeper into himself and sliding Richie’s hand further down. 

“Such a beautiful dick,” Richie says reverently.

“Keep touching me,” Eddie says, and Richie begins to move his hand up and down.

“I’ll do anything you say,” Richie tells him. “Anything you ask.”

All he can feel is Richie’s hand on his dick and Richie’s cock buried up his ass. Richie fucks him harder, pumping his dick up and down even while he’s moving in and out. He’s still got his glasses on; they’re slightly fogged up. Eddie has never seen Richie able to concentrate fully on two things at once before, and he’s glad that this is the one thing for which he can manage that. He feels his orgasm building, hands grabbing tightly onto Richie. 

“Fuck, I think I’m gonna come,” he pants out. “Jesus fucking Christ, you feel good.” Richie just moves faster, hand still relentlessly jerking Eddie off. He looks down at him, panting, and says between thrusts, “Whatever you want it baby, I’ll do it, wanna fuck you like this everyday for the rest of our lives.”

Eddie comes like a wave crashing over him, legs clenched around Richie as his dick pulses. He can feel himself pushing down further onto Richie, burying himself even deeper. “Baby, you feel so fucking good, gonna make me come so hard,” Richie babbles out. He thrusts deeply once more before burying a strangled shout into Eddie’s shoulder, hips still moving a staccato rhythm. Eventually he stills, and softly collapses on Eddie.

“You’re gonna smother me,” Eddie says, but does nothing to extract himself. He loves the feeling of Richie’s chest against his, the soft hair that spreads across the board expanse gently tickling his skin. 

“Don’t make me feel self conscious about my capacity to crush you,” Richie says dazedly. He pulls out slowly before rolling over next to him. He lays there with his eyes closed for a second before taking the condom off himself. He goes to deposit it on the bedside table before catching Eddie’s horrified look. “You better put that in the trash,” he says. Richie smiles fondly at him before walking over to the trash can and dropping it in. He walks back to the bed and collapses next to Eddie, wrapping his arms around him. “You’re going to get my jizz on you,” Eddie says, feeling where it lies sticky against his stomach. “Don’t care,” Richie says, and pulls Eddie closer. 

“You’re quieter during sex than I thought you would be,” Eddie observes.

“Didn’t wanna say something stupid,” Richie says. “I say some really weird things during sex.”

“At this point I’m used to hearing weird things come out of your mouth. I like hearing you; for once, I don’t think I mind you being a Trashmouth.” 

“Next time I’ll really let loose,” Richie promises, and Eddie smiles at the thought of next time.

Eddie lets Richie hold him for a moment before he feels too sticky. He props himself up and swings his legs over the edge of the bed, going to the bathroom. “Are you going to always ruin post sex cuddling with your neurotic need to stay clean?” Richie calls out after him.

“There’s nothing cute about being covered in your own cum,” Eddie retorts, and grabs a towel. He wipes off his stomach before going back to the bed and tossing the towel to Richie. “Here,” he says. “You know, you get really sweaty during sex.”

“Do you think that was easy?” Richie says. “My forearms are going be so fucking sore tomorrow. That’s the most exercise I’ve gotten in months.”

“Well, you should shower,” Eddie says. “I’m going to.” He heads towards the bathroom before looking back at Richie. “You coming or not?” he says. Richie bolts up.

“Fuck yeah,” he says before following Eddie to the bathroom. 

They take a long, soapy shower, full of slow kissing and using cleanliness as an excuse to feel each other up. Eventually they emerge and throw back on their sweatpants and t-shirts. “Okay, now I’m really fucking hungry,” Eddie says.

“I’ll make us breakfast,” Richie says, heading to the kitchen.

“It’s definitely lunch now,” Eddie responds, following him. 

"Breakfast is a state of mind, Eds."

Richie pulls together ingredients for sandwiches and he and Eddie eat together in the kitchen. They don’t get too distracted because they’re both pretty starved at this point, but drop little casual touches when they wouldn’t have before. They finish up and Eddie goes to rinse the dishes in the sink. Richie comes up behind him, wrapping his arms around him. “What do you want to do now?” he whispers. “I think I’m all fucked out for a bit.”

Eddie leans back against him and considers. “I wanna get high,” he blurts out. “I wanted to do it when I came back from New York, but when things got weird it seemed like a terrible idea because I thought I’d just spill everything out. Now I don’t care if I say stupid shit. I think I’d actually like to say some stupid shit now, get it out into the air.”

“Great fucking idea,” Richie says. “God, I haven’t gotten high in so long.” He pulls his arms from around Eddie and heads to his bedroom. “How do you wanna smoke? I got a pipe, I got papers; I might even have a bong somewhere,” he calls out over his shoulder. “I don’t care!” Eddie yells back.

He finishes washing up the dishes. The domesticity is familiar but it feels like so much more now. He doesn’t have to leave, move out to a new place, because he’s home. He’s always been home, he just didn’t understand that what he was feeling was being reciprocated. Now he knows Richie has been thinking of this as their home too, that he’d wanted Eddie in his life not just out of casual camaraderie but the same deep, abiding want Eddie feels.

Richie emerges from his bedroom, triumphantly holding up a joint. “I didn’t know if I could still roll, but I guess it’s like riding a bike. Deck?” he says, gesturing. Eddie follows him through the glass doors into the warm sunlight. 

Eddie sits down on one of the lounging chairs. He expects Richie to get into the one next to it, but instead he tries to squeeze next to Eddie. “Richie, it’s too small to fit both of us,” Eddie says, but he’s laughing.

“Just scoot around a little, I can make this work,” Richie says, moving up and pulling Eddie down on his chest. “Just like the hammock all over again.” With a little maneuvering, Eddie’s propped up against Richie torso, hips nestled between his legs. He leans back, gently twining his hand through Richie’s. Richie gives a squeeze but lets it go. “Need both hands to light this,” he says, bringing the joint to his lips. 

“If you get ash on me I’ll kill you,” Eddie says. 

“Using you as an ashtray is a little too kinky for me,” says Richie. “Unless that actually turns out to be what you’re into.”

“Nope,” Eddie says, leaning back comfortably. “Pretty sure it won’t be.”

Richie takes a hit and passes the joint down to him. Eddie puffs cautiously. He coughs, like he knew he would, but at least it doesn’t taste as noxious as it did when they were kids. He hits it again before passing it back to Richie. 

“I can’t believe how many times I climbed in that fucking hammock without realizing I liked you,” he says. “Like, I didn’t do that with anyone else. Just you.”

“I nearly imploded every time you hopped in,” Richie says. “I used to camp out there just because I wanted you to yell at me and get in. So much of what I did as a kid was just to get your attention.”

“So you knew? You knew the whole time?” Eddie says. 

“I realized when we were like twelve,” Richie says, passing the joint back down to Eddie. “I think I liked you from the first time we met, but I didn’t understand what I was feeling until later.”

“How did you know?” Eddie says, taking a pull. 

“Okay, so we were down in the Barrens. And it might have been just you and me, or Bill and Stan might have been there, I don’t remember. It was just you and me for this part though. I found this honeysuckle bush, and I’d heard that you could pull off the flowers and get a little nectar from them. Plus, I knew you freaked out when I ate random plants. So I pulled one off and stuck the tip in my mouth and sucked it out. It didn’t taste like much, but it was sweet. You started yelling at me about how gross it was and how you couldn’t believe I’d endanger myself like that. I did it again, just to get you to keep freaking out. I told you that you didn’t know what you were missing out on, that it was delicious and you would never know if you kept being a pussy. I didn’t think you were gonna do it, but you grabbed one of the little flowers, bit through the tip, and sucked. And I watched you pull the little stem out to get the last drop with your tongue and I thought, ‘I want to know what his lips taste like.’ And then I knew why I didn’t pay attention to any of the girls, why I wanted to be around you all the time. Why what I felt about you was different from how I felt about Stan and Bill. You unlocked all these gay feelings and I haven’t been able to shake them since.”

Eddie’s head is getting a little foggy. He realizes he’s still holding the joint, and passes it back to Richie. “So wait,” he says hazily. “Was I your gay revelation?”

“Yup,” Richie says. “The boy who showed me I wanted to fuck other dudes. Not like I wanted to fuck you when we were twelve, I just knew I wanted something.”

Eddie laughs a little. “You were my gay revelation too,” he confesses. “When we went back to Derry.”

“No shit, really?” Richie says, sounding delighted.

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “From, like, the second I saw you. Just everything came rushing back and even though I’d been repressing being gay for twenty years I couldn’t interpret what I felt in that moment in any other way than being attracted to another man. All of the weird jumbled memories I’d been pulling together since Mike called just solidified, and I was hit with this feeling of the world finally being right. Which was crazy because I felt no affinity for Derry, like at all. But I say you and I knew what I’d been missing my whole life. There you were, with your dumb glasses, and your ugly shirt, and I just felt so fucking much, more than I’d felt my whole adult life. I realized I was in love with you, and since you were a man I was gay, and always had been.”

Richie passes the joint back down to him, and Eddie takes a puff. He likes the way his head is swimming and his words just spool out, likes the heightened sensation of Richie’s chest pressing against his back. “Why did you go back to Myra?” Richie asks. “Like, you knew you were gay, and you went back to your wife? Did you imagine you were gonna stop being gay or something?”

“I was scared,” Eddie admits. “I’d just gotten out of the hospital, and realized so much shit about myself. I wanted everything to go back to normal because the prospect of upending my entire life after so much had just happened seemed terrifying. I felt like I needed someone to take care of me, and even though I’d begun to recognize what I thought was good care was holding me back, I didn’t know what other way to do things. So I went home and tried to work on my shit and be happier with what I had, but it didn’t work. I wasn’t happy. I was the same repressed mess who’d never gotten over his issues with his mom, even though I finally remembered I even had them. Like, I always had a bad relationship with my mom, but I’d never known the root of it, never known how she’d twisted me as a kid.” Eddie realized he’s gone off on a tangent. He hits the joint once more before passing it back to Richie.

“Anyway, I was a coward. Until I stopped being a coward. I wanted to get better and I was never going to do that in New York. And I could justify coming here because you’d already offered me a place to stay, but really I just wanted to be near you.” 

“You know me telling you to come to LA was a gesture, right? Like, I literally asked you to leave your life to come cross country with me, how did you not pick up I was in love with you?”

“I thought you were straight at the time,” Eddie says.

“Fuck, I should’ve come out way earlier,” Richie says. “Then you would have understand all the vibes I was sending out were explicitly gay.”

“It’s not like I didn’t do the same thing even after we were both out,” Eddie says. “Like, I thought you would understand from your birthday present how I felt. So I wouldn’t have to explain anything and the ball would be in your court.”

“How the fuck did you expect me to get that?” Richie says. “You called me a motherfucker!”

Richie offers him the joint once more and he declines. He feels pleasantly high; he’s sure his tolerance is incredibly low. Richie stubs it out before placing it on the table next to him. 

“But I said you were the best motherfucker. Besides, it’s not my fault you established ‘I fucked your mom’ as a love language.”

“Yeah, and it’s a terrible one! In my Deadlights dreams your last words to me are ‘I fucked your mom.’ Do you know how much I would have regretted it if a lifetime of shitty jokes meant the last thing you ever said to me was ‘I fucked your mom?’”

Eddie shudders. “Can we not talk about your Deadlights dreams please?”

“Sorry,” Richie says, tightening his arms around him. “I’m stoned and stupid. And it’s not real. I know now it’s not real, you’re here.”

Eddie leans his head back, and Richie pulls him down to kiss him. There’s something about being high that makes everything feel enhanced, Richie’s mouth extra warm, his face extra sensitive where Richie’s fingertips brush against it. The make out lazily for a while until Eddie gets a crick in his neck and reluctantly pulls away. 

“Do you really think I’m the best motherfucker in the world?” Richie asks.

Eddie smiles. “I don’t know, ask my mom,” he responds.

It takes Richie a moment before he starts laughing so hard he clutches Eddie tighter to him. “The validation I need,” he says. “I’m glad you can finally acknowledge I’ve been blowing her mind all these years. Even though every time I said I fucked your mom was just me trying to get you riled up.”

“Well, it worked,” Eddie says.

“You know I didn’t have a meeting on my birthday? I just wanted to see you, wanted you to be the first person I talked to. I had this stupid idea that whatever I did on my birthday would predict the rest of my year, and I wanted to see your face every morning.”

“You’re such a sap,” Eddie says fondly. “Have you always been this much of a romantic?”

“For you, forever,” Richie says, nuzzling his face into his hair. 

They just sit there, content. Eddie lets the feeling of being high and enveloped by Richie wash over him. His thoughts are turning over in his head in fuzzy swirls.

He feels Richie’s phone buzz. Richie sighs, and wrestles it out. “I told Bill I’d meet up with him later tonight, and I’m sure as fuck not doing that now.”

“Are you gonna tell him about this?” Eddie says. 

“I don’t know, do you want me to?” Richie asks, sounding nervous. 

“Yeah, of course,” Eddie responds. “Bill knows how I feel; fuck, I should probably tell him myself.”

“Let’s get them all in one fell swoop,” says Richie. He tugs Eddie back against him and pulls out his phone. He points the camera at them, tells Eddie “Make a face like I just rocked your world,” and snaps a picture. He brings out their group message and begins typing. Eddie frowns at what he says. 

“‘Guys, I just fucked the hottest man in all of LA,’” he reads out. He looks up at Richie and frowns. “That’s the best you can come up with? Crude.”

“Well, what would you say?” Richie responds.

“I don’t know,”’ says Eddie idly. “‘I just got together with the hottest guy in LA?’ They don’t need to know we’ve fucked.”

He feels Richie tense up behind him. “Is that what's happening?” he says quietly. “Are we getting together?”

Eddie scoots out from Richie's legs and sits cross legged, facing him. “I don’t know,” he says seriously. “Is that what you want?” 

Richie gapes at him. “Yeah, of course,” he says incredulously. “Eds, that’s what I’ve always wanted.”

Eddie flushes. “Good,” he says. “In that case-”

“No,” Richie cuts him off. “No, I get to do this. You got to confess first, let me have something. Besides, I’ve wanted to do this since I was thirteen years old.” Richie reaches out and grabs both of Eddie’s hands. “Eddie Kaspbrak,” he says, staring into Eddie’s eyes. They’re shining with want and love. “Will you be my boyfriend?” 

Eddie smiles. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I will be your boyfriend.”

Richie whoops, and pumps his fist in the air. “I’m dating Eddie Kaspbrak!” he yells at the top of his lungs. “He’s my boyfriend now! I got the sexiest man in the world locked the fuck down!”

“We’re going to get a noise complaint, shut up,” Eddie says, and moves in to kiss him. He can't believe that everything ridiculous thing Richie does makes him want to kiss him; even though, really, he’s always felt this way, and now he gets to do it. 

Richie pulls away. “Let me revise my text,” he says, and turns back to his phone. In a little bit, Eddie feels his own pocket buzz. He pulls out his phone.

_Guess who’s dating the hottest guy in la??? ;)_

Bev responds immediately:

**Holy shit, who is it??**

Eddie’s phone buzzes again. Richie’s sent the picture of the two of him he just took. Richie’s grinning so wide it looks like it might split his face. Eddie’s smile is more bashful, but it reaches all the way up to his eyes. Eddie stares at the photo for a moment before making it his background. 

Bev texts again: 

**!!!!!**

Bill responds:

_Who told who first?_

Eddie chimes in. 

**Me**

_Bev, you owe me $100,_ Bill says.

**And me,** Mike adds.

 _You fuckers,_ Richie responds. _Did you really have bets riding on this?_

 _Me and Mike bet on Eddie, Bev bet on you,_ Bill responds. _Ben abstained._

 **Thank you Ben,** Eddie says.  
_I’m just glad you guys got together :),_ Ben says. 

**So happy for you both!!** says Bev.

Eddie smiles once more and puts his phone away. He can’t even find it in himself to be embarrassed that all their friends knew; it’s a testament to his own obliviousness that he never figured it out. Because looking back on their childhood, on his life since he moved to LA, he sees everything in a new context. Every one of Richie’s touches meant something, even when Eddie had no idea why they made his heart race. When Eddie was still in the dark about how he felt, Richie had been reaching out to him. He sees Richie’s actions since he’d moved to LA differently now, knowing that Richie had felt the tension between them stretch out the same way Eddie did when they shared the couch, when they walked side by side on the boardwalk at the beach. He can’t believe he was able to ignore that crackle of electricity for so long, chalk it up to being in his own head. But they figured it out. They get to be here now.

They sit out on the deck, talking about different moments they remember, instances they’d felt so completely struck by the other one. Richie talks about the times he’d almost told him when they were kids, nights and days when he’d had to hold himself back from blurting out ‘I love you.’ He said a couple of those times were in the middle of Eddie shouting at him, because he would just get so overwhelmed by the thought of Eddie caring about him. Eventually, it begins to get dark, and they peel themselves off the chair and head inside. “Let’s order takeout,” Eddie says. “I don’t have it in me to cook anything.”

“Love it when you cook,” Richie says. “You’ve gotten really good at it, you know. Like, you weren’t bad when you moved in, and now you’re solidly excellent.”

Eddie blushes. He’s not used to Richie being so sincere, just saying all the nice thoughts he has in his head, which Eddie knows have always been there but Richie rarely feels vulnerable enough to give voice to.

They order takeout, Richie insisting on sushi even as Eddie only orders a chicken and rice dish. He doesn’t mind; he likes watching Richie trying to pick up a whole roll of sushi at once with his chopsticks. Richie tries to feed him a piece, but he’s still adamant about not consuming raw fish. 

Maybe later, he thinks. He’ll remember Richie’s favorite type of rolls, and go to a highly rated fishmonger to pick up a fully verified cut of tuna. He'll go home and figure out how to make sushi, smoothing out layers of rice and seaweed paper. He’ll slice the rolls up, and lay them out on a little wooden platter he’ll have picked up for just this purpose, then set them out on the table for him and Richie to enjoy. He wants to cook for Richie, but he also wants to do it for himself. Maybe he’s scared of raw fish, and maybe he always will be, but he’s coming to understand there’s no endpoint on the journey to living a better life. It’s about consciously moving forward, knowing you can't have perfect control over everything except your own choices. Choosing to face the things that frightened him had so far only strengthened him. He wants to keep doing that. He wants to hike up a path that looks too steep and too rocky. He wants to ride a motorcycle and whip down the Pacific Coast highway with the wind against his face. He wants to hold Richie’s hand in public and pull him down to kiss him for all the world to see. And he can choose to do all that and more.

After dinner they just settle on the couch and cuddle. Eddie’s lying down on Richie’s chest, Richie’s hand gently stroking through his hair. Thinking about the rest of the night, Eddie groans without meaning to.

“What?” Richie says. “Already sick of me?”

“No, it’s not that, it’s just that I remembered I have to go back to work tomorrow. At least it’s a Friday.”

“Yeah,” Richie says. “We all have to work at some point.” He sounds glum.

The gears begin to turn over in Eddie’s head. “Fuck, you’re going on tour,” he says. “I can’t believe you have that fucking tour coming up. When do you leave?”

“Three weeks,” says Richie, sounding even more morose. “I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to get myself out of the house so I wouldn’t be so fucking depressed by you being gone. Now the whole thing seems like a really shitty idea. Big regrets. Maybe I’ll just call the whole thing off.”

“I know you’re joking about that because your career is too important,” Eddie says. “This is your big moment. It’s not like you’ll be gone forever.”

“Four months,” says Richie. Eddie winces. Not knowing how to make this any better, he just says heavily, “Yeah, that sucks.” He’d just gotten to have this, and even though living in Richie’s house with him gone won’t be as bad with the knowledge Richie loves him, he’s still going to be pretty unhappy for four months.

“Come on tour with me,” Richie says suddenly. Eddie looks up at him. He almost doesn’t look like he believes what just came out of his mouth. Eddie doesn’t respond. He feels floored by what Richie’s asking, the continued joining of their lives together. They’ve been with each other nearly constantly but there’s a different level to embarking on an extended trip together. He remembers them talking about a road trip when they were kids, just getting the fuck out of Derry, taking Richie’s shitty used Pontiac and just going wherever they wanted.

“Fuck, you don’t have to, I know it’s stupid. I just-I just really don’t wanna fucking be away from you, okay?” he says hurriedly. “Like, I know it’s pathetic, but I don’t wanna get to be with you for the next three weeks and then have to leave for four months. The tour will suck if that happens; I’ll probably bomb because I’ll be too sad to be funny. I know it’s crazy, I know you have shit to do here, but it would be so much better with you.”

Eddie really doesn’t want to be away from Richie either. Now that he’s had this, he thinks he’ll tear his hair out being alone in the house while Richie’s gone. Richie might think he’s the pathetic one, but there’s a hundred percent chance Eddie would sleep in Richie’s bed until the pillows didn’t smell like him anymore.

“I could probably take a leave of absence from my job,” he says slowly. “Like, they can do without me for four months. They kept me on when I randomly moved here, I think I pretty much have them over a barrel. Besides, there are always other jobs.”

“So you’re . . . ?” Richie says hopefully.

“Let’s go on tour,” Eddie says, smiling. 

Richie swoops down and starts peppering his face with kisses. “This is going to be the best tour ever,” he says. “We’re gonna fuck in every city in America.”

Eddie’s barely seen any of the United States. He’s lived in the country’s two biggest cities and its absolute shittiest town but that’s it. There’s a whole array of new things awaiting him out there, food he’d never find on his own and skies that come in different shades of blue. And he’s not doing it alone, he’s going to experience it all with Richie.

“You’re going to New York, right?” Eddie asks.

“Yeah, of course,” Richie tells him.

“We can go to Jacob Riis,” Eddie says. “We’ll finally both be in New York in the summer at the same time.”

Richie smiles down at him. “I love beach Eddie,” he says. “Especially after you got trunks that fit you. That expanse of thigh? Maddening,” he tells him.

Eventually without meaning to they’re both nodding off. Eddie nudges Richie. “C’mon,” he says “Time to go to bed.”

They tromp back down the hallway, and Eddie splits off to go to his room. “I’m gonna get ready for bed, then I’ll be in there,” he tells Richie.

“You should put your toothpaste and shit in my room,” Richie calls out to him. “You look kind of silly going back and forth.”

Eddie thinks about the prospect of standing next to Richie while they both brush their teeth and feels happier than he has any right to be over such a simple thing. “Be right back,” he says, and goes to collect his extensive nighttime supplies to take to Richie’s bathroom. Since they never really got out of their pajamas all day there’s nothing to change into. He starts doing his skincare routine and Richie watches him from the doorway. “Is that why you look so good?” he asks. “Weird vials filled with the blood of unicorns, and chemicals specifically engineered in labs that force your cells to age backwards?”

“If you don’t take care of yourself, you're gonna get wrinkles,” Eddie says. “Do you put on sunscreen every morning?” 

“Are you supposed to do that?” Richie asks. Eddie can’t tell if he’s joking or not. 

“I’m gonna be so pissed if you get skin cancer,” Eddie tells him.

They make it back to Richie’s bed and get in. Once under the covers they’re immediately drawn to each other, wrapping up in a loose tangle of limbs.

“Best way to be in a bed,” Richie mumbles. "Falling asleep, sleeping, waking up; Eddie Kaspbrak is the ideal accompaniment to them all." 

“I won’t be here in the morning,” Eddie warns.

“I’m gonna get up with you,” Richie says. “Like, maybe I can’t promise that because I turn into a solid log in my sleep, but I want to. Like I said, I wanna see your face first thing in the morning, and I’ll get up like four hours earlier than I normally do to do it. Plus, I can always nap while you’re at work.”

Eddie finds his mouth and kisses him. In only a day this feels familiar, like something already present in his life had just clicked into place. He feels himself being pulled under though, so he nestles his head against Richie’s chest. “Bed time,” he says sleepily.

“Sure you don’t wanna go for one more round?” Richie says. “Still lots of ways we haven’t fucked.”

“Tempting, but I think it’s too early in the relationship to fall asleep during sex. Now, sleep.” He closes his eyes, and pulls his arms up against Richie’s chest. He feels Richie press a kiss into his hair.

“I love you, Eddie,” Richie says. 

Eddie smiles and places his hand down over Richie’s heart. He can feel it’s steady beat, the thrumming that tells him that Richie is here with him. “I love you too,” he says.

Eddie didn’t know life could feel this wonderful. The world has shifted over just one inch and all of the grooves of reality suddenly fit together like they should because he and Richie know they love each other. He gets to navigate the life he’s built for himself with Richie by his side, not just as a friend, but also something so much more. There’s a whole new language they’re about to learn together, a whole new pattern of existence to refine and move within. Eddie loves what he’s tasted of that so far, and he wants it to just grow and grow until his entire life is encompassed in how good it feels to be with Richie. He can act out all of the dumb little thoughts he’s had, the times he wanted to reach up and tuck Richie’s hair behind his ear, and fix his folded down collar. He doesn’t have to keep pulling himself back, erecting a barrier between the person he presents to the world and the person who he truly wants to be. He gets to laugh at Richie’s without worrying if he’ll give himself away by laughing too hard. He wants to give himself away. He wants Richie to know how much he loves him every time he laughs, every time he smiles at him. He wants to tell Richie he loves him in a million different ways for the rest of their lives. Today is just the first day. There are more to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're almost done! Can't believe how far these boys have come. 
> 
> Come talk to me on twitter [@beepbeepbxtch](https://twitter.com/beepbeepbxtch) and tumblr at [toziertool](https://toziertool.tumblr.com/)!


	14. when this kiss is over it will start again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie and Eddie dance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from 'Heaven'

Eddie doesn’t think he’s ever seen Bev look more beautiful then she does dancing with Ben under the soft lights of the outdoor reception. Her hair curls around her neck, bright as a fire, and the pale expanse of skin above her dress glows. She’s got one hand on Ben’s shoulder, and she’s gazing up at him with this smile that takes over her entire face. He has one hand gently resting on her hip, the other one clasped with her’s as they sway gently. It’s ‘In Your Eyes’ by Peter Gabriel and Eddie knows it’s cheesy but they don't care and neither does he. 

Bev eventually was the one to propose to Ben. She said she didn’t know if he’d ever pull the trigger because her last marriage had been such a train wreck, but she knew she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him and she wanted that life to get started. 

They chose LA for the wedding because it was the easiest place for them to all gather together. Mike’s still nomadic; he’d made his way out of Southern California eventually, traveling up the coast before spending a fair amount of time in the Pacific Northwest. He says the woods feel grand in a different way than they do on the East Coast, steeped in a magic that feels old and powerful but not evil.

Bill’s brought Audra. Eddie thinks they’re somewhere dancing together, but he’s not sure. He’s liked getting to know Audra more and more. After hanging out a couple more times her blunt sense of humor had emerged. One day Richie cracked a joke about actresses being human mannequins, and she’d responded by telling him stand up comedians were ventriloquist dummies controlled by their inner sadness. After that the floodgates were open, and she and Richie started going back and forth at it with glee, roasting each other until it made everyone else uncomfortable. 

He looks for Richie, not finding him. Richie had walked Bev down the aisle before taking his place as her best man, and then proceeded to cry throughout the entire ceremony. He looked so handsome up there in his suit that even though Eddie knew he should be paying attention to his best friends on one of the happiest days of their lives, he couldn’t help but just stare at Richie. During the vows Richie’s eyes found his, and Eddie knew, or at least hoped, that they were thinking the same thing. 

He sees Richie making his way around the dance floor towards him. He's loosened the tie on his suit, and his face looks happy and open. Eddie just marvels at how handsome his boyfriend is. He’s carrying two flutes of champagne, which he deposits on the table.

“Open bar is the only way to do a wedding,” he says. “Can you imagine if we had to deal with some drink ticket bullshit? No way, José, I’m gonna take four glasses at once and you can’t stop me.”

Eddie sips his champagne. “Let’s try and not get blackout drunk at our best friends’ wedding.”

“Two of the glasses would be for you, obviously, I’m not trying to shotgun champagne.” Despite his words, he takes a hearty gulp from his flute. Eddie looks at the tilt of his head, at the line of his throat above his shirt collar, unable to tear his eyes away. Richie catches him looking and grins wickedly at him. “You thinking sinful thoughts over there?”

Eddie leans in and whispers in his ear, “Yeah, and maybe if you’re good I’ll share them with you later.”

Richie shivers, and Eddie smiles. He hopes he’ll never stop affecting Richie like this, setting him off in the exact way he sets Eddie off. Eddie hears the music fade into another song, and instead of responding, Richie stands up and offers him a hand. “We’re putting that on the back burner for now because Bev explicitly forbade me from sneaking out of her reception to ravish you. Now, let's dance” Richie leads him out onto the dance floor. The lights catch his hair, and his hand is warm where it envelopes Eddie’s. 

Eddie recognizes the song as it continues playing. It’s ‘Heaven,’ by the Talking Heads. Richie puts one arm on his waist and grabs his hand in the other one. He pulls Eddie against him and starts to sway slightly.

_“The band in heaven/They play my favorite song”_

“Did you request this?” Eddie asks suspiciously.

Richie’s grin widens. “Maybe. It’s not a wedding if someone doesn’t hijack the DJ at some point. Plus, it’s a pretty song, it’s not like I busted out some Run DMC or Metallica. I thought you’d like it.”

Eddie smiles back at him. “Of course I like it.”

About two months into their relationship after some pestering Eddie admitted he had been inspired to leave Myra by a well placed musical moment. “I know it’s embarrassing that the thing that motivated me was the fucking Talking Heads, but it just broke through to me.”

“So fucking glad I made you listen to that song when were kids,” Richie said. “At age fifteen I planted the subliminal seeds to one day get you to leave your wife for me.”

They’d watched all of _Stop Making Sense_ together one night in the living room when they got back from tour. Eddie had never seen it before, just heard snippets about it from Richie. He thought they would just watch it like a movie, but on the very first song Richie had pulled him up to dance. Richie ran around like the singer and Eddie did the little bobbing shuffle the bassist did. They’d screamed at the top of their lungs and hopped around. But during this song Richie had just held him tightly against him, barely moving as they let the music wash over them. 

_“Play it one more time/Play it all night long”_

He and Richie danced a lot. Which was something he thought adults didn’t really do. He knew how stupid they must look to anyone looking in but it didn’t feel stupid. It felt like he was free, like he could move his body around until he just lifted off the ground. Richie would put on music when Eddie got home from work, and would just sweep him up until they were both out of breath. He’d put something soft and old on while Eddie was making dinner, and just clasp him by the hand and delicately lead him across the room. Once, Richie had incredibly nervously asked him if he wanted to slow dance. “It’s just I always wanted to slow dance with you in high school. I had these dreams sometimes that I’d show up outside your house in a stupid suit with flowers and you’d go to the dance with me, and we could do that dumb fucking leave-room-for-Jesus dance. So I’d like to do that with you now. If you’re into it.”

Eddie had smiled at him and said, “Only if I get to pick the song.” So they held onto each other, Richie’s hands on Eddie’s shoulders and Eddie’s hands on Richie’s waist, barely moving their feet, while ‘Crazy for You,’ played over the speakers.

_“Heaven/Heaven is a place”_

Eddie loved being in the city with Richie. Being on the road had been great in it’s own way, but coming back to LA had been the first time in his life he truly felt like he was coming home. Richie had insisted in carrying him over the doorway bridal style when they got back, claiming they needed to christen it as their joint household. Eddie reminded him it had pretty much been christened as that when they’d had sex in every room before they left. Richie said that there was no harm in doing a re-christening. 

They have favorite spots in LA now, a brewery that has rotating beers and ciders on tap, a little french bistro tucked away down a side street. Eddie has a favorite park, and a favorite beach. He doesn’t know if it’s his favorite park because Richie had taken him on a picnic there and accidentally opened a shook up bottle of champagne, spraying it all over both of them until Richie tried to lick the droplets off his face, or if it was his favorite beach because he and Richie had stood on the water’s edge and watched the sunset together. But it didn’t matter why he loved them, just that he had these things in his life that made it full.

_“A place where nothing/Nothing ever happens”_

It was amazing to him how little had actually changed. He and Richie were forced to admit that they may have been dating each other without knowing they were dating. The only logistical change in their lives is that Eddie moved into Richie’s bedroom full time. Their bedroom now.

Eddie had started making redecorating changes too. He’d told Richie that he’d felt like he’d never had a chance to cultivate his own style, and wanted to see what he liked. Richie enthusiastically accompanied him to furniture dealers, perused paint swatches with him. He’d tried to convince him to re-paint the kitchen themselves but Eddie had reminded him he was rich and could just hire people to do it. Richie had told him it wasn’t about that, it was the experience. It had pretty quickly devolved into an argument about the time Richie had tried to paint his bedroom black in high school and tracked paint all through his house.

Eddie likes that the house feels like his too now. Rather than just nestling himself into Richie’s already existing life he’s carved his own spot, remade his own surroundings. It feels like the house is a shared thing between him and Richie, a physical manifestation of the further joining of their lives. 

_“There is a party/Everyone is there”_

He finally spots Bill and Audra, wearing a bright red dress that somehow doesn’t clash with her hair. They’re talking to Mike, and Bill is laughing so hard he’s a little pink in the face. Bill’s finalizing work on his latest book; he won't let any of them read it until he deems it fit for public consumption. Eddie told him if there was a character in there who resembles him in the slightest he would kick him into the sun. Bill assured him that he had a wide enough imagination to invent characters of his own.

This wasn’t the first time they’d all come together since Derry. They’d all shown up to Richie’s first show as a surprise, sitting in the front row. He’d walked out on stage, and when he’d seen them he’d said “Holy shit,” grinned at them, and proceeded to perform the funniest stand up set Eddie had ever seen. Not that he’d seen a lot of stand up, but he would’ve bet everything he owned that Richie’s was the best.

Even though all of them being together feels wonderful he’ll always feel the absence of Stan. He misses him. He doesn’t think he’ll ever stop missing him. He didn’t know he missed him for twenty something years, and now that he remembers he feels the ache of all those years on top of each other. He hopes Stan had a good life, that he was happy. Out of all of them, he thinks Stan came the closest to achieving that, even with the memories of their childhood erased. Stan had a wife who loved him, and a full existence. Eddie would never stop mourning that that existence had been cut short, but he’s still grateful he got to have Stan in his life even for a bounded span of time. 

_“Everyone will leave/At exactly the same time”_

He doesn’t know what’s next for him and Richie. His job hadn’t agreed to keep him on when he told them he wanted to take four months off to gallivant around the country with his professional comedian boyfriend, but had strongly indicated there would be a place for him if he wished to return. But now that he’s had a taste of traveling around with Richie he doesn’t want to stop. He’s been scared his whole life of going to new places, being overwhelmed by crowds of people. But now he wants it. He’s never been to Europe, to South America. He’d never seen the point before; too many tourists, and he wouldn’t be able to eat any of the food, and he had no particular interest in cultural sites. But now he wants to order a plate of spaghetti in Rome and pretend to be annoyed when Richie teases him. He wants to take a boat out to the Pacific Ocean and look for whales, watching them gently arch above the surface of the water. And now they have nothing but time.

Richie’s tour had gone over brilliantly. He wouldn’t shut the fuck up about how he’s become a gay icon and an inspiration for the youth. “I’m like the new George Michael, just without the bathroom exposure incident. Unless you want to have sex in a public restroom.” Eddie had declined; he wasn’t quite at the point in his processing where he would have sex in what was sure to be a germ infested restroom, even if Richie offered to go over everything with a lysol wipe first.

Eddie came to every show. Richie told him he didn’t have to, that it was probably boring seeing it night after night, but Eddie told him it was a little different every time, that the crowd fed off Richie in individual ways, and he loved seeing them react to different parts they found funny. Eddie had stood in the wings and watched Richie perform in profile, he’d sat in the front row so Richie could see him laughing. Richie had written his entire set before he and Eddie got together, but he promises the next one will be full of sordid details about their sex life, despite Eddie’s protests to the contrary. He still tells a story about Eddie, about the time when they were kids and Richie thought it would be a good idea to jump down from a tree and surprise him. Eddie had screamed and punched him in the nose, and wouldn’t stop yelling at him even as he was trying to mop up the blood with tissues. Eddie felt embarrassed the first time he heard Richie tell it on stage over what an intense, hyperactive kid he was, but Richie delivered it with such affection that soon Eddie didn’t mind.

They’d filmed the tour, and they were planning on coming out with a Netflix special. Richie said he didn’t know what he wanted to do next. He said the options in front of him were infinite, that he could write a horror comedy with Bill or try out for movie roles, or that if he wanted to he could choose to not work for a year. He’d said Eddie could do the same, and they could just play house husbands all day. Eddie reminded him that if Richie didn’t have a constant stream of affirmation from people laughing at his jokes he would die like Tinkerbell.

_"When this kiss is over/It will start again”_

Richie pulls away from him. “Which is better, this wedding or your wedding?”

“I don’t even have the words to describe how terrible my wedding was,” Eddie says. “I think I've blacked out most of it. I do remember being very monotone with my vows and Myra glaring at me. This wedding blows mine out of the water.”

“Next one will be even better,” Richie promises. Eddie looks at him. He wonders if he’s reading Richie correctly, because the next wedding they’re likely to attend would be their own. And Eddie’s certain that would be the best wedding in existence.

He leans up to kiss Richie. Even after six months of being together, he hasn’t gotten tired of kissing him. Sometimes it’s soft and slow, when they’re curled up on the couch and get distracted from whatever movie they’re watching. Sometimes Eddie will get home from work and Richie will run over from his office and pounce on him, pushing him up against the door and kissing him breathless. He still remembers the first time Richie kissed him in public. They’d been sitting on a bench, and Eddie was complaining about bicyclists not wearing helmets, because it was a safety issue and it was just stupid, anyone knows that the head is the most fragile part of the body. Richie had just swooped over and kissed him briefly. Eddie had felt this initial spike of fear, like someone would see and scream at them. But no one did, so he’d leaned over and kissed Richie again. 

Eddie has also discovered the joys of sex. That somehow kept getting better and better as he and Richie found out what the other liked and started trying new things. In one therapy session Eddie hesitatingly went over all the things he’d ever fantasized about since he came to terms with his sexuality that made him feel dirty and ashamed. She’d told him there was nothing such as “normal” sex, that doing things that seem weird in ordinary life is just part of the experience. And he trusted Richie enough to tell him what he wanted, even though he still sometimes worried about his judgement. But Richie never made fun of him and laughed at him, or acted like what Eddie was interested in was abnormal in any way. Richie had his own things he wanted to try, and together they’d navigated the give and take of what felt good to them.

_“It will not be any different/It will be exactly the same”_

He’d known since he left Derry that he wanted to spend his life with Richie; he'd known it subconsciously when they were kids. It’s almost bizarre that he gets to. He wonders if there’s an alternative world out there where he didn’t figure his shit out, where he stayed stagnant or died down there in the cistern. He feels a little sadness for these hypothetical versions of Eddie, the ones that lived out lives of quiet desperation or who had their chances to live authentically snatched away from them. But those realities weren’t his, Richie had saved him, and he’d chosen to make his own life.

_“It's hard to imagine/That nothing at all”_

Eddie can’t believe he spent 20 years in a haze of unhappiness. He’d forgotten what it was like to have people in his life who made him feel strong and brave and capable of taking charge of his own life. Being back with his friends had given him the power to stand up on his own, to stack up the building blocks of his new life until he’s perfectly happy living there. The world doesn’t feel like a twisting nest of hazards and fears anymore, sickness and accidents haunting every decision. He hasn’t made those fears go away entirely but now he can look at them out in the light, give them names without shame. 

_“Could be so exciting/Could be this much fun”_

Richie looks down at him. “Do you think we’ll hoist Ben and Bev on chairs?”

“I think that’s only at Jewish weddings,” Eddie says.

“Fuck it, I’m going to do it anyway. Get them a little closer to God on the most magical night of their lives.”

“Most magical night of your life is a bullshit concept, how are you supposed to know which night is objectively the most magical?”

“It’s like an orgasm; when it’s happening, you know.”

“Okay, so what’s the most magical night of your life?” Eddie says

“I don’t know, it’s still _coming_ ,” Richie says, doing his dumb half wink. Eddie fake shoves him off, but doesn’t resist when Richie pulls him in closer.

“Seriously, Eds,” Richie breathes into his hair. “I’ll let you know when we get there.

Eddie knows after this song they’ll pull away and find their friends. They’ll stay up the whole night celebrating them, laughing and toasting. He and Richie will go back to their house and maybe they’ll have sex or maybe they won’t. Either way, they’ll fall asleep wrapped up in each other. He doesn’t know what they’ll do tomorrow; he doesn’t need to, because whatever it is they’ll do it together, with their family by their sides.

For the first time he can remember he’s looking forward to where he’s going next instead of fearing the anxiety-laden trudge forward. Now, when he looks ahead, he sees Richie and the Losers, a life that expands and changes for the better. Because he fought for it, because he deserves it. He’s looked his fears in the face one by one until he found he didn’t need them to stay aloft. All he’d ever needed was himself.

He nestles into Richie’s chest and closes his eyes. ‘I love you,’ he thinks, knowing without having to ask that Richie is thinking the same. 

y

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I truly can't believe this story is over. Thank you so much to everyone who read it, who commented on it, who enjoyed it; your responses mean the world to me. 
> 
> Come talk to me on twitter [@beepbeepbxtch](https://twitter.com/beepbeepbxtch) and tumblr at [toziertool](https://toziertool.tumblr.com/)!


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